Merry Ficmas, 2014!
by KissTheBoy7
Summary: Holiday fics for my lovely friends this year :) More than I've done in previous years, mostly RENT and Chess but there are also a few Heathers, Bare, and HP drabbles in there! I love you all, happy holidays.
1. Mary

They come together in a less than charming way.

(Or, rather, Freddie thinks himself quite charming – and Svetlana, clearly, does not.)

It seems that nobody knows what to do now that the tournament has ended so abruptly. Florence, disappeared, and Anatoly still standing in line after line at the embassy, trying desperately to find some way not to have to go back to Russia. He hasn't so much as looked his wife in the eye since she's been here, and their hotel rooms are on the same floor.

Freddie's is on that floor, too, but he won't _let _Anatoly pass him by without eye contact. It's the least the bastard can do.

This, of course, results in several extremely awkward moments of silent staring during the week following the championship match. Freddie endures it with some bizarre, grim satisfaction. He likes that he can get a rise out of the Russian.

Well. One of them.

That's really what started this whole one-sided cat-and-mouse game, Freddie muses later. If Svetlana had only given him a smile, a glance even, in passing, he wouldn't have become so maddeningly obsessed with earning one.

There's nothing to do now, while they wait for the flights to be arranged and the politics to draw to a close, or for the Chess Federation to boot them from their rooms. Freddie doesn't even really appear on the news anymore, not after the closing ceremony, so all he's doing is sitting around and twiddling his thumbs – and idleness had never been Freddie's strong suit.

So, he makes a game out of it. They had, after all, worked together for a brief moment during Walter and Molokov's games, and they had got along well enough.

(He refuses to acknowledge what role Florence's absence may be playing in all of his brooding. He does not miss her. Does _not._

She'd made her choice, and he could live with that.)

Svetlana looks through him, expressionless, when she passes him grumbling at a vending machine, trying to shake his quarters back out of it when it doesn't dispense the candy bar he wants. He stops what he's doing and watches her pass, opening his mouth as though to say something, then shuts it.

Incredulity wells up in his chest as she descends the stairs. What the _hell?_

Was he not even worth a nod? A "hello, Trumper" in that soft, occasionally deadly voice of hers? For crying out loud, he wasn't a criminal! He hadn't done anything to piss her off. Had he?

He decides to find out.

Svetlana does not want an apology. He hadn't done anything wrong. She tells him so, when he asks (demands, really) when he catches her – quite literally having hunted through the entire hotel, practically with is nose to the ground like a bloodhound, as Walter would describe it sardonically to him later – in the hotel restaurant later that afternoon.

For some reason, that's not enough for him.

She looks at him impassively from beneath those near-white eyelashes and although there is no emotion unconcealed there, it does funny things to his heart.

Perhaps it's not her disinterest, then. It could just be that he's not as unaffected by feminine wiles as he'd thought himself all these years.

Or maybe it's just the idea of winning where Sergievsky had failed.

It clicks, then, the third day, when he slides himself into the booth across from her with a smooth smile he'd learned during his first internship at a broadcasting agency, back in college, when he'd had organized ambitions and no one to hold him back. And there _is _no one to hold him back anymore, now, is there? Not Florence, not Walter, not even _Sergievsky, _who had stolen his title and his partner and a year of his life.

_Yes, _he thinks, with a curl of vindictive pleasure at the base of his spine. _It will be nice to see the look on his face._

But for that to happen, of course, he has to woo her before they have to leave.

His mind whirs, already five moves ahead, and her eyes search his face warily, as though she recognizes his expression.

She'll expect him to be like her husband – chessmen's brains operated in startlingly similar ways, after all. Except for his.

He won't be like Anatoly. Oh, no.

He leans forward on his elbows and widens his smile. "Is this seat taken?"

She leans back in her seat, calculating. "… No," she says eventually, and he finds himself overly pleased with the lack of hostility in her tone. "But I don't recall inviting you."

"People rarely do." He nods, and his grin is genuine now. _White moves. _Now, all he has to do is wait and see whether or not she's willing to play.

Svetlana stares at him for a long time, but in the end she only shrugs, eyes returning to the menu. She doesn't offer to share it with him, but when she's chosen her dish she does place it carefully down and nudge it in his direction, gazing out the window.

The game begins.

It goes on for another week like that. Svetlana never seeks him out in return and Freddie is irrationally bothered by that, as though he really expects his irrational, overzealous interest in her to be returned when he has done nothing but pester her at mealtimes and sometimes before bed, if he can catch her on her way to her rooms.

Despite her careful façade, he learns quite a few things about Sergievsky's wife.

For one, she doesn't particularly _want _her husband back, for all that she'd argued with him about it. The quiet relief in her eyes said it all, but even more interesting was that she said it deliberately, out loud, to a man she owed less than nothing to.

"I can't have children," she confesses one night, as casually as if it meant nothing, but Freddie's eyes are sharp and he catches the bitter set of her jaw, the way her knuckles whiten around her silverware. She has two menus delivered to her table now, whenever she dines. He wonders what she does when he doesn't show up.

Does she miss him?

Why does he _care?_

This game is getting both interesting and disturbingly intimate, and Freddie is torn between the urge to sprint in the opposite direction and the impulse to reach across the table and stroke her hair back from her face.

Christ, it's Florence all over again.

But Svetlana isn't Florence. She doesn't know chess, doesn't know business. She only knows family, and loyalty, and the sting of betrayal… and that –

Well, that, Freddie can _certainly _understand.

"I suspected that he simply was not trying, but the doctors, they confirmed it. I will never bear a child. Not his or anyone else's."

This conversation had started out light, their usual banter, his usual oily, pseudo-charming small talk. He can't remember when it had taken such a sharp turn, but it's affecting him, and he's having a hard time denying that to himself.

His throat feels strangely tight. "You could adopt, maybe? There are surrogates. Options."

"Not while I am married to that mudak," she murmurs, and her eyes drop to the table. Like that, the conversation is over.

Freddie would normally badger her until she talked, or snapped, at the very least.

Now, he doesn't know what to say.

What did he care about having children? _He _certainly wasn't fit to raise a child, God knew that. He never would be. He'd hardly had good role models for that sort of thing –

And that's when he decides a change of topic is in order.

By the time their food has arrived she is snorting with laughter into her glass, and Freddie is grinning smugly at his small victory. Bump in the road forgotten.

But he thinks about it that night. Her face. Her voice. Her hands, trembling.

Resentment for Anatoly is not something he's unused to in general, just… recently. But it's not unwelcome.

Freddie stares at the ceiling, arms folded behind his head, and wonders if he has any strings left that he could pull to bring Sergievsky's life crashing down around him even more disastrously than it already was.

Once, he had entertained the idea of friendship with the man.

Now, he knows that he'd never deserved any of their attentions.

Not his. Not Florence's.

Not his own wife's.

The day comes that Svetlana receives word from the Russian party that they will be returning to Moscow, with haste, and that she should pack her bags if she intended to return with them.

Freddie stares at the letter wordlessly, wondering what it is she expects him to do with this information. There's a strange buzzing in his ears. The text begins to blur and bend before his eyes, but he doesn't dare to so much as blink and chance missing something, anything.

He doesn't realize that his face has gone stony until Svetlana taps her fingers, blue eyes boring into his skull, as if in challenge.

Her lips are so delicate to look at. He loves to know that they can speak harshly. One would never expect it. S_he would make an excellent chess player._

"I will be departing at three," she tells him, and though her voice is soft, it's laced with some insidious emotion that Freddie fumbles trying to name. He's not used to this – to being implored, searched, read as though he's an open book, and he feels uncomfortably as though he is, now. Years of carefully cultivated indifference, and now his mask is gone without a trace.

His tongue feels too big for his mouth. What does one even say to something like that?

"You need any help packing?" he asks, strangled, and she starts. Laughs.

"Perhaps," she offers, and for the first time her lips curve into a truly unguarded smile. It's something Freddie hasn't seen from anyone in his life for years, since his friendship with Florence had gone sour, corrupted.

"I was hoping, though, that you might talk me out of it."

He stands abruptly, holding out a hand as he'd imagined all those weeks ago. His eyes are blazing.

"I can do both."

And as she takes it (and God, her skin is soft, and God, he tingles, and he knows that people are watching them now and he'd never been one for public displays but this is so different and she is so different, and he _likes _that) he thinks to himself that this was no stalemate, nor a loss, for either of them.

No. They had both won this mental match of his.

He had fumbled, and spluttered, and made an ass of himself for two weeks, but somehow Svetlana does not seem to mind, internally indifferent to his antics. Somehow, _somehow, _he must have stumbled just the right way.

This wasn't what he had strategized, but then, there had never been a foolproof plan. And privately he's much more satisfied with this prize than the indistinct, irrational goal he'd had before, to simply flirt and toy and tease.

It was definitely more fun when the toyed would tease back, as he found when those soft hands abruptly grabbed him by the collar and dragged him into the hotel room down the hall from his, several minutes later.


	2. Nikki

Among the many trivial details of his life that Mark consciously chooses not to divulge, the cactus thing is probably the most pathetic.

He doesn't mean to _collect_ them. His mother, ironically, is the first one to send him one, he can't even remember why now it's been so long – and he nearly throws it out, except, well, he's a pussy and he can't bear the thought of killing anything, not even this prickly little plant that he can't imagine anyone ever loving. So he sets it in the window with a sigh and there it stays, right near the sink, soaking in the sunlight and quietly subsisting.

There's something about owning plants that Mark has always found calming. He thinks to himself that it's the quiet solidarity – the reassurance that no matter what, it's always there observing and breathing silently, something to come home to even though he doesn't have a cat or even a roommate, lately, since Roger had practically moved himself in with Mimi downstairs.

He can hear them sometimes. It's fucking lonely now, with no one but his stupid little window cactus to talk to, although he secretly thinks that it loves to be talked to and he confides in it far more often than he's proud to admit.

Roger had promised not to leave him alone again, but right now he's too busy wrapped up in his girlfriend to pay Mark any special attention, and… that's kind of fair. Mimi could have died and now somehow, against the odds, she's still here. Months later, healthy and happy and practically _glowing._

He's happier for her, for them, than he is jealous. He's sure of that.

Still, the cactus is good company, but not _enough _good company, and somehow he finds himself coming home with another tiny pot cupped in his hands, another tiny cactus to place beside the first, with a pretty yellow bloom on the top, looking almost fuzzy. He resists the urge to pet it like a cat, just barely.

He waters both of them and stands back to observe the way the sun falls on their needles, irrationally proud of his miniature garden.

It spirals out of control from there. In the year that Mimi's been back, Mark somehow acquires a narrow windowsill full of tiny pots and needles and bright little flowers, sixteen at his last count, and it's beginning to spill over onto the counter as well, and God, if Roger were ever here long enough to do anything but riffle through his old tatty notebooks grumbling about some long-forgotten, unfinished lyric, he would probably be taking the piss out of him daily.

But things aren't so lonely with his cactus family for company. He can't bring himself to resent them much at all.

That doesn't stop the Christmas Eve from being absolutely depressing, though.

Collins isn't coming back this year – he'd phoned to tell him so a week ago, apologetically, all the way from his new gig at a school in Maine. (the long-distance bill remains untouched and studiously ignored on the kitchen table, where it would probably stay until Mark's conscience finally caved to the pressure) Maureen and Joanne have gone away on a Mediterranean cruise on borrowed Jefferson money, and Mark somehow doubted they would remember to call and check in on him.

That left Roger and Mimi, who for the past three days have sounded like cats in heat in their bedroom directly beneath Mark's mattress, and he'd stared at the ceiling for hours each night, in the dark, so flushed and embarrassed he was sure he was going to give himself a nosebleed trying to pretend it didn't turn him on, just a little.

So, yeah, the afternoon of Christmas Eve kind of drags. It's slow and thick and Mark is strangely exhausted at just the thought of going about his day as normal, as if this isn't a holiday really and as if he has something to do with himself tonight, or tomorrow, since there's no work to do and no friends to visit.

He gives up on organizing the mess inside the top drawer of his desk and wanders into the kitchen, leaning on the counter beside his garden and breathing a sigh over his cactus friends. In his mind they're leaning toward him like cats, purring and delighted, soaking in every molecule of carbon dioxide he can possibly give them.

He shakes his head suddenly, frowning at himself. He can't go _depending _on these ridiculous baby plants, that's just… that would just be…

_Pathetic._

But isn't he already, kind of?

And doesn't everyone already know it?

He sighs again, louder, and looks around the silent loft as if in challenge. There is no answering sigh from the empty room. His frown deepens.

God, he really _is_ alone on Christmas. That hadn't happened in _years._

At least the heat is on. Benny has been tolerable lately, in small doses – and he _does _seem earnest, trying to get back on their good sides, but thus far only Mark has really given him anything in return besides outright skepticism and an awkward goodbye. They've gone out to lunch twice, and Benny had paid both times.

It's beginning to feel uncomfortably like a date, but that's probably because Mark hasn't _been_ on a date in going on three years.

He climbs carefully up onto the counter and sits there, cross-legged, clutching a mug of tea and watching the snow fall sluggishly through the chilly windowpane. The baby cacti purr in his head once more, when he glances down at them, and this time he doesn't bother telling himself to be realistic.

What fun would that be? He lives in reality all the time. It's boring. Corporate.

He still felt like a sellout, biking to his nine-to-five every day, paying the rent like a normal person, if maybe a little late at times. Him, with no roommate to bother him, no girlfriend to distract him, no friends, really, to speak of, except for these godforsaken pots full of needles.

"I should have gotten you guys a present," he tells them sadly, reaching to gently stroke the spines as though they're precious. To him, they really are. It's a moment of intense wallowing and he closes his eyes and sighs, savoring it. "Merry Christmas, anyways…"

"Merry Christmas to you, too," Roger says casually in his ear, and Mark jerks so hard he falls off the counter and stumbles back against his chest, heart hammering, swearing at the top of his lungs as he shoves the cackling asshole away.

"You _jackass," _he gasps when he can breathe again, glaring daggers. Roger looks strangely smug. He's had a haircut recently, looks like, and he's actually freshly shaven, probably because Mimi had insisted on it if he were going anywhere near her good parts. "What the fuck are you doing here, I didn't even hear you come in!"

"That's not my fault," Roger points out, and brings something out from behind his back with a flourish, as though he expects Mark to be impressed. It's a potted cactus, bigger than any of the others in his windowsill garden. Mark stares.

A long moment passes before he breaks and thrusts it into his hands, impatient. "It's your present. Merry Christmas."

"It's not Christmas yet." Mark can't help it; he's always most sarcastic when he's taken off guard, and he can safely say this had been a surprise. He hadn't expected to see Roger at all in the next two days. He hadn't seen him on Easter, or on Halloween…

"Fuck off!" Roger snorts and shoves him, glancing pointedly at the collection of plants innocently observing them from the windowsill. "Aren't you going to come downstairs? We put the tree up, we were waiting for you."

Mark blinks slowly between Roger's face and the heavy pot in his hands, uncomprehending. "… You- want me to come down? I thought –"

"Of course we fucking want you there, Mark, Jesus," he laughs. The words stick to Mark's skin and absorb very slowly, warmth spreading over his skin like a flush. "I'll help you carry your stupid plants down if you want."

He steps around him and starts collecting them, putting them into his pockets, balancing them in the crooks of his arms, and Mark starts to grin.

Maybe he's not quite as alone as he thought.


	3. Collin

Some days – like today, for example – Veronica really feels like she lucked out in the friend department this year.

The first week of school had been absolutely horrendous, as expected. Homework piled up. Classes dragged. She hid in the bathroom during lunch – because Martha spent her lunch periods in the library volunteering – and listened to her classmates talk shit while they fixed their makeup.

And then the Heathers happened.

"VeroniCA! It doesn't take that long to make POPCORN!"

_Get your ass back in here and cuddle!_

Veronica hears her girlfriend's voice escalate by an estimated two octaves in her head before she returns to the living room, bowl in hand, grinning.

Heather is scowling. Behind her, Heather is helping Heather fix her botched nail job with a practiced hand, drawling, "Calm down, Chandler, don't have a cow. You don't need the carbs, anyways."

"Shut _up_, Heather," she bites out, twisting to narrow her eyes at her, but in the past month or so her patented death glares have started to lose their touch. Veronica is privately smug; she knows it's her fault, and damn, it feels good to have that kind of power.

She plops down on the cushion beside her girlfriend and curls their pinkies together, stifling a smirk at the way Heather's shoulders relax automatically. It was like taming a lion, dating Heather Chandler, and all of her hard work and observation had paid off.

Heather leans her head against Veronica's shoulder and sighs, loudly and dramatically. "Tell her to leave," she demands, but Veronica only reaches up to stroke her hair, smiling.

"You don't really want her to leave," she says, faintly exasperated but mostly amused. Heather Duke _could _be a piece of work sometimes, but she was thoughtful, too, on the inside. Over Heather's shoulder she watches her carefully painting glitter onto Heather McNamara's nails, smiling faintly despite her barbed words.

It was strange, even now, remembering the impression she'd had of the Heathers to begin with, because it was _so _off the mark.

First of all, none of these girls were the least bit threatening. Sure, Heather might occasionally arrange for someone's tires to be deflated, if they pissed her off enough, and Heather's cutting remarks were more than enough to make some of their classmates cry on occasion, especially during midterms, but Veronica had everything under control now. She was certain of that.

Another thing she was certain of now was that none of these girls was anything resembling heterosexual. The very idea was enough to make her snort into her drink.

"What movie should we watch next?" Heather gasped, wiggling her toes in excitement. Heather flashed her a glare and grumbled a bit, grabbing her ankles and yanking them back into position in her lap. The polish was bright yellow and it would _definitely _show against the navy of Heather Chandler's plush maroon carpet. "I want to watch Rudolph." She bit her lip, suddenly, and glanced to Veronica. "Um, if you have it?"

Veronica presses her lips chastely to Heather's honey-colored curls and hides her smile for a moment before nodding, extricating herself so that she can walk over and thumb through the pile of cheesy Christmas movies she'd brought from home, holding up the cassette triumphantly. "Got it!" she reassures, glancing over her shoulder. Heather beams at her, and her fingertips brush Veronica's leg when she passes and pops the VHS into the player.

This isn't what she'd envisioned her Christmas Eve to be like, but she's definitely not complaining.

"Come back," Heather demands, puffing her cheeks out the way she does when she's not getting her way. Veronica thinks that if people could see how she acts when the four of them are alone, they'd be a lot less terrified by her. Heather Chandler is a secret cuddler, but more than that, she's secretly _soft._

The number of nasty, abusive boyfriends she's stared down for girls she hardly even knows is testament to that.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," she laughs, falling back into Heather's lap gracelessly, and feels her cheeks warm as Heather slides her arms possessively around her waist, thumb stroking tenderly at the patch of exposed skin where her t-shirt is riding up. "Miss me?" she murmurs, twisting to look at her. Heather's eyes are burning.

"Yes," she snaps, but it's all for show. She hauls Veronica in for a kiss just as the familiar tune starts to play and Heather McNamara squeals, launching herself onto the couch with them, screeching, "It's on, it's on!"

The couch dips again and Veronica hears rather than sees Heather Duke reluctantly following her, settling in on the end of the couch, doubtlessly with her knees curled up against her chest and her chin resting atop them, as she normally did.

Her lips curve against Heather's. No, this wasn't what she'd expected when the three of them had approached her in September.

It's a hell of a lot better.


	4. Vikki

For reasons she herself doesn't understand completely, Florence Vassy does not return to England after the disastrous tournament in Bangkok.

She doesn't want to think about it. She never, ever wants to think about it again.

She doesn't want to think about Freddie.

She doesn't want to think about Anatoly.

She doesn't fucking want to think about _chess_.

And that means England is out of the question. It doesn't matter, really. Circumstances have left her a citizen of the world and she takes full advantage of her connections, of her carefully squirreled finances, of her reputation, and gets on a plane to America.

It comes as a great relief when she hears from a friend of a friend that Freddie Trumper has relocated to his hometown in New Jersey, because it leaves the big apple for her. She's always been fond of New York – Florence enjoys the bustle, takes comfort in her own anonymity. No one in this city is looking at her, for her… She can finally be invisible.

It's easy to find a new career. She's got three degrees, none of which she'd ever had to use, but suddenly it's paying off, all of those long hours toiling and studying in her early twenties. No one had appreciated it before, but now.

Well. Now it's her time. Time she made her own path.

She does.

It gets lonely, and she doesn't want to admit that.

She doesn't need them, and she doesn't want to think about them, so she doesn't. She doesn't. She works and works and works, and she _doesn't _think of those two awful men, of that godforsaken board game, of politicians and gambits and betrayal.

So, naturally, she ends up at a bar on a Wednesday night, tipsy and rambling her own sob story at the redheaded bartender, who looks thankfully more amused than annoyed.

"Sweetheart," she says, reaching over the bar to steady her – Florence stops leaning, heat blooming in her cheeks at the light touch."It's one in the morning. Time to head home, unless you want to sleep back here with the Scotch."

Florence, to her credit, is a compliant drunk, and the woman stepping out from behind the counter right now has very shiny lips and very pretty earrings and she's happy enough to walk out with her.

"I'm sorry," she tells her honestly, anxiously, but the woman just smirks.

"No, I'm sorry. You're going to hate yourself tomorrow," she laughs, and hails herself a cab. "Get home safe."

"My name is Florence," Florence says, as though it's relevant – as though this girl probably cares about anything except getting home so she can have a drink of her own and probably go to bed directly afterward.

"April," comes the reply, and then the cab is pulling away from the curb, and Florence stands outside the bar in the orange pavement beneath the streetlight for nearly twenty more minutes, just wondering.

It's four months post-Bangkok.

She does hate herself in the morning, but it doesn't keep her from going back.

The leaves aren't quite changing colors yet, but there's a bite in the air when she arrives after a long and harrowing day at the office, hair sticking out of her ponytail at odd angles, makeup smudged, looking thoroughly disgruntled. She intends to apologize, and sure enough, there is that woman with the red hair, April, her earrings twinkling in the strobe lights as she smiles at the sleazy men who hit on her near continuously, as Florence remembers, all through the night.

Come to think of it, not many men had approached them once Florence had started talking. She can't imagine why that is, but she's grateful.

Also, embarrassed. Hence the apology.

But it's hard to get a hold of April like this, and she's loath to bother her, so two hours later when the early crowd has thinned she slides into a seat directly across from the taps and shifts awkwardly, adjusting her blazer.

"Another bad day? That's two in a row." April tosses that playful tone of voice over her shoulder like a ball and Florence fumbles to catch it, flushing despite herself. She glances back and clucks her tongue, grinning.

Florence forces herself to relax. It's harder than it should be.

April is a very pretty girl. Her hair is fire-engine red, but she pulls it off; her eyes are incredibly green, but that might just be the emphasis her makeup puts on it… and God, Florence wishes she could do her own eyeliner half that well. She has to be younger than Florence by at _least_ five years, but she's obviously old enough to tend a bar, and something about the set of her shoulders tells Florence she might know just as much about the world, or at least the dirtier parts of it.

"No, not any worse than any other day," she admits, smiling sheepishly and feeling uncomfortably like she's emulating Freddie in the process.

But she's not thinking of him.

"Just needed to unwind, then?" April winks and pushes a glass over to her. "It's on the house. It's good to know you survived. I felt bad for not getting you a cab."

If her cheeks had been hot before, then now they're on fire. _Oh God, she thinks I'm a sloppy drunken excuse for a –_

Florence sips at her drink to disguise her flush and smiles when she recognizes the taste. "You remembered." Granted, April had probably sat there listening to her ramble about how much she loved apple martinis for about an hour and a half the night before, but Florence is in the middle of pretending that never happened.

Except she still needs to apologize…

April doesn't give her a moment to contemplate it, though, sweeping away to tend the other patrons and tossing her cheeky smiles every once in a while, and eventually Florence gives up and leaves her an extra-generous tip on her way out the door, feeling foolish for ever thinking this was a good idea.

She returns the next night, and the next three after that, and April seems pleased to see her every time. Which is odd. But odder is the fact that Florence keeps coming.

She's never been one for the bar scene, even in college, when Freddie used to take her to get smashed with him on Friday nights (or, more often than not, to be his designated driver – not that he had ever admitted to that). The flashing neon makes her head ache, and the noise is even worse.

But April is entertaining. Somehow she finds the time to chat Florence up every night, about everything – she asks her about her job, her nonexistent love life, her apartment (April, apparently, is living with her ex and a few of his friends at the moment in a run-down pile of shit apartment in the East Village, and Florence spends half an hour wincing on her behalf as she describes the petty revenge tactics they'd all started to employ when she'd made it clear she wasn't going to sleep with him anymore) and in return Florence starts to get a fluttery feeling in her gut every time April casts those pretty eyes on her.

Another thing that she never did in college is experiment. She'd shut herself in her dorm to study right up until she'd met Freddie in her junior year, and at that point he'd been the only sensible choice, with the way she was bent on her career and he on his. And now…

Now, she feels like some hormone-driven sorority girl, and it's making her absolutely dizzy.

April has very soft hands, and very sharp eyes, and an even sharper sense of humor. Florence hasn't had a friend nearly five months, longer if you didn't count that disaster with Anatoly. April, though, begins to feel very much like a friend. Or something like that...

It's a Friday night, and the man tending the bar is both unpleasant and unfamiliar.

Florence holds her tongue, barely, and watches him gruffly go about his business from the end of the bar. This isn't what she'd come here for. An ugly thought rears it's head – what if April had quit, and not told her?

But no – she'd told Florence that she'd be working tonight, for _sure. _Then, afterwards, they would finally go out together and have a night on the town.

It was too good to be true, obviously. April was nowhere to be seen.

Taking one last furtive, mildly disgusted glance at the sullen, greasy-haired man tending the bar, Florence slips out of her seat and reluctantly slips through the jostling crowds to the door.

The nights are getting colder and colder. It's been seven months since Bangkok and December had crept up on her without warning – of course, she was used to the dreary cold and damp of England, and this was no worse, but the city turned the snow to dirty, oily slush and all that remained was frostbite and bitter voices grumbling. Somehow, tonight in particular it felt even colder – lonelier, really, but that was absurd. Florence had never been prone to loneliness before.

Still, it didn't feel exceptionally good to be blown off…

Her building was only a few blocks away. Sternly, she told herself that she didn't need a cab, despite the biting wind and the uncomfortable, damp chill seeping into her shoes, hoping in vain that the walk might numb her irrational sense of rejection.

(By the time she got home, she'd have earned the half-tub of ice cream she'd probably consume, in any case.)

The falling snow, thankfully, had no chance of being tainted; it was pristine and glittered charmingly in the soft glow of the streetlights, frosting windows and railings, adding a certain gentleness to everything.

Florence hadn't known anything gentle in her life. The concept had escaped her – until recently.

There was a flurry of red hair, in the corner of her eye. She stopped abruptly and whipped around – no one. She was alone on the street.

Shaking the thought from her head, she frowned and started to walk away again.

"I told you, I don't _have_ it!" The snapping voice that drifted to her ears was eerily familiar. The back of Florence's neck prickled with foreboding; without a thought, (which was probably _exactly_ what had gotten her into the Anatoly situation, if she were honest) she spun and stalked toward the source of the scuffle, listening in growing alarm to the muffled argument.

It was definitely April. Her voice was sharper than she'd ever heard it, laced with venom – and underlying fear. "Fuck off," she snarled, and Florence turned the corner to witness her yanking her arm from the hands of a tall, skeevy-looking man in a long, dark jacket. He moved after her, sneering in a way that made Florence want to slap him.

"You owe me a lot of money, sweetheart," he says lowly, but Florence is coming closer now, can hear him perfectly clearly, and her blood pressure spikes. Despite the snow, she's hot, boiling. Her palm itches. _Oh, I'm going to give it to him._

There were a lot of people in her life that Florence had regretted never smacking across the face, but she didn't think she could forgive herself if she let this particular man get away.

April was a perfectly good actor. Her expression was unconcerned, if contemptuous, cherry-red lip curling. "I don't _have _your money yet. You're going to have to wait. I told you about the move –"

The man grabs for her again, more roughly, and Florence breaks her stride to swing her hand back and slap him so hard that he stumbles. Her hand is stinging, her heart pounding. _Holy shit. Holy shit. _He's drawing up again, turning on her murderously, and Florence flails for April's wrist in a panic, squeaking.

"Come on!"

April doesn't need to be told twice. They pelt out of the alley, slipping and shrieking, holding each other, and they don't stop running until they've reached Florence's building. Florence slumps against the brick, panting for breath. Her shoes are going to be _ruined._

When she finally looks up, starting to smile, April is staring at her. _She _isn't smiling. She looks – almost embarrassed, lips pursed.

"You didn't have to do that."

"Of course I did!" Florence draws herself back up, scandalized, and reaches for her arm. April flinches away and she lets her hand fall, biting her lip apologetically. "What was I supposed to do, leave you there? You didn't look like you wanted to be anywhere near him."

"You don't understand." Shifting uncomfortably, April brushes her hair from her eyes, looking away. "I _do _owe him money."

"Well he doesn't have a right to grab you like that," Florence mutters. She glances her over speculatively, suspicions starting to form. The man had obviously been involved in _some _kind of criminal activity. "Regardless of _why _you owe him money…"

It wasn't as though she couldn't have guessed. April had made no effort to disguise the marks at the crooks of her elbows at her workplace – why should she? Florence had gotten over it rather quickly. Whatever she did for recreation, April was… frankly, amazing. Although perhaps she was biased.

A flush rises on her face before she can stop it. April is still staring, eyes even wider, then narrowed suspiciously. "Why don't you care?"

"I was under the impression that we were becoming friends." Florence smiles, tentative, and April slowly – visibly – lets her guard down, rubbing her bruised arm absently.

"I – me, too," she said softly, eyes falling to the slush again. "I should probably get back to my apartment, though. He'll be able to find it if he's got half a brain, and I haven't even finished unpacking –"

_The move. _She'd nearly forgotten to ask. Carefully, she clears her throat. "You… moved?"

April's face is pink. "… Roger told me to leave. Last night," she admits, and she looks horribly cold, so Florence thinks nothing of shrugging off her coat and offering it to her. April refuses to take it, jaw set stubbornly. "We got into an argument. About you, actually."

"Me?" Flabbergasted, Florence takes a step back. "Why don't you just… come inside. We can go back to your apartment once you're warm."

Sighing, April reluctantly follows after her, and they climb the stairs mostly in silence. Finally, she blurts, reddening, "I told him about our plans tonight. He – well, honestly, I'd rather not repeat it. Mark is probably still yelling at him. I was already planning on moving out – I had the boxes packed – but it was just…"

"Sudden," Florence supplies, and sympathetically reaches to squeeze her hand. April clutches it with surprising force and doesn't let it go; Florence decides she definitely doesn't mind.

"Yeah."

They pause at the door to Florence's apartment; as she sifts for her keys, she feels the tension building. April is fidgeting now, like she's about to burst.

"I might have told him it was a date." She coughs, and Florence nearly snorts.

"What? Really?" _Did you want it to be?_

April gives her a hard look, somewhat softened by the uncertain way she keeps shifting. "He keeps bothering me about getting back together – I didn't know how else to tell him I… already…"

Florence gives up on the keys, and reaches out to cup her face, kissing the end of the sentence from her lips.

"You know," she says conversationally as they break apart. "Maybe you ought to have asked me, before you moved… There's plenty of room for you here."

April smiles, and for the first time in months Florence allows herself to think of Bangkok and everything she'd lost there.

There was more to life than chess, and there was more to love than chess players.


	5. Olivia

_Dear Eli,_

_I'm sorry I haven't called. I've been thinking a lot lately. I know that sounds kind of bad. I swear I'm not trying to be – I don't know…_

With a frustrated snort, Harvey savagely crumples the paper in his fist and poises his pen tensely over the fresh sheet beneath it.

_Dear Eli,_

_I wish I'd never left. I don't know how to come back to you now. I'm not sure you'd even want me anymore, after that. I should have –_

"Fuck you," he whispers to himself under his breath, rereading the lines with an unbearable degree of humiliation before he crumples that one as well. This is how he'd spent the last three weeks – all three of which he'd been spending in his childhood bedroom, sulking and thinking only of his boyfriend.

Ex-boyfriend now, probably.

It wasn't… _entirely _his fault. Eli might have been a little less candid about his weird affair with Roger. It wasn't completely unexpected, and honestly, Harvey wouldn't have cared so much, if it were anyone but Roger.

That smug bastard was probably _still _smirking about that. Fucking asshole.

Harvey stared down in utter dismay at the blank page. The floor was littered with piss-poor, half-written apologies and tearful soliloquies. He wishes desperately that he'd never taken a creative writing class. It's completely destroyed his ability to write anything without using some shitty metaphor, even a letter.

Eli loved his poetry, usually. But this wasn't usually.

Eli had probably _burned _all of the poetry he'd written for him by now – with _Roger's _lighter. He fights a sneer, even though Eli's not here to see it and fret about what's got him down.

_Oh God. Why did I leave? Why couldn't I just –_

It was panic, pure and simple. He had no better excuse. No real way to apologize, either. Even if he did pick up the phone and call Eli, he doubted he'd answer it. They had caller ID and Eli was more than intelligent enough to know his family's Texan area code by now.

_And it's not like I can just go for a jaunt and bump into him…_

He knew exactly why Eli had told him so soon and so suddenly. He was _scared. _He had to get tested – he had to deal with the uncertainty, now, and with the fact that he'd cheated, and now Harvey thinks of him at home in their apartment crying his eyes out into a pillow, alone and trembling and miserable, and he _hates _himself for leaving him like that.

(Worse, he imagines Roger – Roger climbing down the stairs, Roger cautiously, awkwardly pulling Eli into his arms to comfort him like Harvey hadn't, beating him _again_.)

He groans, burying his face in his hands and slumping over the desk in defeat.

He can't do this right now. Can't think. Definitely can't write.

So instead he falls into bed and shuts himself away from the world for another day.

He wakes to his breath being knocked bodily out of him, and would have rolled out of bed if not for the fact that someone was sitting in his lap.

"Ken," he starts groggily, annoyance bubbling quickly to the surface, but when he manages to peel his eyes open it's not his obnoxious brother who greets him. It's –

"Merry Christmas," Eli says shyly, peeking at him through his dark eyelashes, and Harvey loses his train of thought completely.

"Ah –" He tries, staring openly, his hands coming to rest tentatively on his skinny waist almost without thought. It's not really his fault that he can't find his words, but most things are his fault right now and he might as well lump this in with it all. "Hon?"

"I know you don't want to see me," Eli blurts hastily, eyes very wide and very, sickeningly apologetic. Another pang of guilt renders him speechless for a critical moment, in which Eli continues to ramble as though his life depends on it, clutching his shoulders. "But I called – and your mom – and your brothers, they all said – I could come."

He finishes in a rush and peers at him anxiously, as if waiting for an ultimatum.

Harvey reaches up to drag him down beside him, arms wrapping so tightly around him he's liable to squish him to death. "I'll never stop wanting to see you every second of the goddamn day. Merry Christmas, hon," he rasps, and buries his face into Eli's shoulder so that he won't see the tears pricking his eyes.

Eli coos and presses closer into his embrace, rubbing his head into Harvey's hand when he reaches up to thread his fingers into his lover's curly hair.

He thinks of the ring box still nestled in his bag. He thinks of all those useless hours he spent moping when he could have been on a plane, or back in their apartment, or on the damn _phone, _at least.

He thinks of his brother and his mother, probably grinning smugly at each other downstairs by the Christmas tree, and then quickly banishes that thought from his mind.

"Are you sure?" Eli whispers, and all he can do is nod vigorously against his shoulder.

God, yes, he's sure.

He'd forgive him a thousand times if there was even anything to forgive.

There's still a lot to be done. First, he has book them a flight back to New York so he can beat the _shit_ out of Roger. Then they have to wait for the results – but no, this isn't the time to be thinking about that.

For God's sakes, it's _Christmas_.

"I'm just glad that you're here," he manages, knowing that Eli won't accept an apology, that he thinks everything is his own fault. He'll talk him out of that later. Right now, he just wants to lie here with him – to touch, and kiss, and bask in their shared body heat while no one is bothering them.

"I'm sorry," Eli starts, and Harvey cuts him off with a kiss.


	6. Ricky

"Kiss me," Mark demands, and Roger only gives him a smug look before grabbing his face in his hands and earnestly complying.

It's all Maureen's fault, honestly. She was the one who had started the conversation last week when they'd all gotten together at the Life – those impromptu dinners were getting fewer and further between and he was achingly aware of the way everyone's lives were slowly, naturally separating.

Forks in the road. Mark had known they were coming, but not this fast.

He's not ready.

He is, however, apparently ready for this.

Everyone knew Mark and Roger's story by heart by now. Unlikely friends in junior high, then inseparable until college, and against all odds, somehow, they'd ended up living together completely by accident the week after Mark dropped out and went rogue.

Collins got a strange gleam in his eye whenever that story was told, and Mark had his suspicions, but he kept his mouth shut. He was good at that.

Besides, it's been a long time since he was reunited with Roger, and the shock has worn off. Now he can be nothing but grateful. Even if – and he probably had – Collins had arranged the whole thing, behind the scenes.

He'd probably been expecting more of a show. All he'd gotten was Mark's awkward greeting and Roger's frozen stare for a full minute before he got up and scrutinized Mark all over, muttering about how he couldn't believe he'd managed to get even skinnier without wasting away.

Well, he was getting his show now. Seven years later, but hey. It still counts, right?

Roger is a fucking fantastic kisser. Even with Collins in the next room, undoubtedly watching them furtively from behind the stack of essay's he'd surrounded himself with on the couch, it was mind-blowing. Fantastic. Amazing. Roger knew just what to do with his tongue, with his fingertips, with his whole body. It blew his fucking mind.

This was _exactly _what he'd wanted.

For days now. Well, obviously longer than that, but days since Maureen had just _had _to go on and on and on about how everyone in their little ragtag group had kissed… except for Mark and Roger.

Collins had snorted so hard into his tea that it had sloshed onto the table, and Mark can still feel the flush on his skin most of a week later –

Or maybe that's just Roger, fingers twisted in his short hair, pulling him closer. Mark doesn't hesitate to lean into it, groaning, throwing his arms around Roger's neck and eagerly sucking at his lip, and then his tongue, breaths coming louder and more ragged.

"What's the occasion, boys?" Collins calls out to them, and Mark can _hear _the smug grin in his voice. Then, abruptly, he laughs. He must have shifted his gaze to Mark's arm, still stretched absurdly over their heads. "Good going, Cohen!"

Neither of them breaks away to give him the satisfaction, although Mark's ears are burning. He whimpers and Roger abruptly grabs a fistful of his shirt, twisting to drag him into his room and out of the public eye.

Just before they hit the mattress Mark sees Collins flashing him a cheeky thumbs up through the bead curtains. He flips him off in return –

Roger catches the finger in his mouth and _sucks, _wet and sloppy and ridiculously erotic, and Mark thanks every deity whose name he knows that all of those years of unresolved sexual tension had paid off.


	7. chris

At first it's nothing but dark, and he's _terrified._

There is a distinction to be made, between consciousness and this, whatever _this _was. Freddie isn't entirely certain where he is – purgatory, maybe, but there probably aren't couches in purgatory for sitting…

And he's pretty sure what he's sitting on is a couch. It's relatively comfortable. He squeezes the cushion and jiggles his leg nervously and looks around, and sees nothing. Nothing. Not even his own fingers, extended and wiggling experimentally before his face.

He's not sure if he even has hands, come to think of it.

He's not sure of anything, apparently.

The terror that had seized him at the sudden jerk in his gut and his head that had accompanied Roger's violent outburst subsides, eventually, and in it's place…

Freddie can't help but feel curious.

It's a growing, gnawing feeling deep inside of him (if he does have a form, if he is still alive, in some way or form…) and he can already feel the telltale heat of a future obsession on the horizon, gleaming. It's like a particularly good game of chess.

He _will _figure this out. He's Freddie fucking Trumper.

There isn't a puzzle in the world he couldn't solve, not today or any other day.

(There, a flash, a memory or maybe a glimpse of whatever is happening in the "real world", the one Roger had wrenched him from in order to take his place.)

Roger is an enigma in himself. He behaves nearly identically to Freddie, but his voice is different, his hands a different sort of delicate. He buys a plane ticket, and then a guitar. It's a beat up old acoustic; he could have afforded something better, with all Freddie's money, but apparently that's of no interest to him.

Time passes… Freddie isn't entirely aware of it. The inside world isn't actually that bad. At first it's just a couch, but that pulls out, as he discovers when he gets tired enough to really consider sleeping. Can he sleep, in here? Is this place even real? God only knows, but Roger seems to think it is, tells him that he can keep "the apartment" because he was going to go out and rent a real one, for the first time in his life.

He tells Freddie smugly that he's going to be a fucking _star, _a real one – and he can't stop him.

Freddie finds that he doesn't really care.

Being away from Florence – and away from the damn competition, which he'd always hated – is actually turning out to be rather… relaxing. And he feels horribly guilty at first, just thinking it, but it's true. It's true and he _shouldn't _have to feel guilty. She'd _betrayed _him! Seven years of friendship out the window, and for what?

The longer it goes on, the more comfortable the inside of his head starts to feel. There are blankets, and every book he's ever read. There's a whole network of hallways, large and small rooms, elaborate puzzles to keep him entertained. The outside world is dreary in comparison.

There is one thing he misses, though.

Chess.

No chessboards appear inside, no matter how hard he tries to conjure one. In quiet, angry despair, he pushes against the walls until his face is white with the effort.

At first, it seems like nothing is working. Roger is unbothered. He comes to Freddie, sometimes, before he falls asleep – he looks around his quarters with a strange pride and a certain degree of admiration, but he never stays more than an hour or two, and he never bothers to shut the door behind him.

Still frustrated, but considerably calmer, Freddie waits. He waits, and he watches.

Roger has friends. It comes as a mild shock to him that in the months that he'd happily abandoned the outside world altogether, Roger has brought them all the way back to the city – it must be New York, he's sure of that, but it's a part of New York he only vaguely remembers from his youth, and it's even dirtier than it used to be, full of homeless and poor that Freddie feels pangs of painful empathy for. He can use Roger's eyes, if nothing else, and he takes in all of the sights greedily, deprived as he's been while he's been feeling his way around the labyrinth of his mind.

They're pretty decent friends. Freddie meets, all in one day, April, Benny, Maureen, Collins, and Mark. Mark, he thinks, is his favorite. Mark looks like the only one who'd probably be interested in chess at all – perhaps Collins, but Freddie's already pegged him as the type to start a game and then distract himself with his joint until he could do nothing but ramble on about the philosophy and the history behind the moves rather than forming his own strategy. Mentally, he beats Collins about eight times before he gives up and tells himself that he can't possibly know how any of these people would be to play against – he doesn't even know them.

Roger knows them. Roger _loves _them. He can feel it, deep in their bones, deep in the vibrations of the walls of his inner world.

Slowly, though, the walls are beginning to grow subtle cracks.

Freddie is ready the moment they appear.

The first time he slips through it's a chilly Monday morning and the first thing he's aware of is a splitting hangover that doesn't belong to him. He groans and clutches his head – discovers, to his mild delight, that his hair is shaggy and long again as it had been before Florence had suggested his "professional look" in a tone that he hadn't dared to argue with, at the time. "What the fuck?"

His voice is the same. His hands, on close inspection, are also the same, although they've been roughened with guitar callouses. He's unsurprised. Roger has two guitars now, and he's usually attached to one or the other.

"You awake?" Mark smiles at him from across the room. He's sitting at the kitchen table, reading a copy of the Village Voice. He points at his mug. "Tea?"

"No," he groans, and rolls over, and that's that.

The second time he's prepared, or so he thinks. But the moment the cold slaps his face he remembers why he'd thought for so long that it might be nice to stay inside forever. To his alarm, he can't figure out how to get back, and spends several mildly terrifying hours wandering around a flea market he's never seen before, smiling nervously at strangers.

It's there, though, that he finds a battered old travel chess set with all of it's pieces intact. It's made of light wood and slips easily into the pocket of his leather jacket, which he has to admit looks cool to wear. He wonders why he'd never thought to own one before.

_Before, you had no idea what you could be._

Roger, of course, isn't happy to discover that Freddie has found his control again – however scattered and limited it may be.

He calms down considerably when he realizes that Freddie has no intention of returning to Merano. Or to Florence.

Especially not to Florence.

December comes very suddenly, or so it seems to Freddie – he still can't, and sometimes doesn't _want_ to, measure the passage of time from the corner of his mind he's usually holed up in. It's not like it matters. It's not his life anymore – he's just a visitor who occasionally gets up to play chess with himself at night, and on one memorable occasion with Mark, who also happened to be awake and was too comfortable with him to realize that Freddie was anything but his admittedly eccentric roommate.

He'd beaten him in under ten moves, of course, and scowled when Mark expressed his shock – that, he thinks solemnly to himself, was very in character of him.

All in all, he's rather impressed with his own acting skills.

The days slowly shave away, and the year is nearly over. Freddie finds himself strangely bubbly with anticipation – this new year is going to be a fresh start, and he's already forgotten about all the pressures of the chess world, all the harassment he'd faced, all of the lies he'd been told, all of this disgusting people he was forced to associate with for the sake of a good game.

Roger agrees without words. They're doing that more and more lately, just feeling each other out, and more and more Roger doesn't mind if he turns their head while they're walking, or demands Mark play another game of chess on his battered little board.

It still somehow comes as a surprise when Christmas rolls around and Roger is nowhere to be heard. Freddie wakes up groggy, reaching up to feel his face – stubble again. He tries not to grimace and cracks an eye open, disoriented.

There's sun streaming in through the skylight, watery and weak but nevertheless, light. He rubs his eyes and forces himself to sit up.

The loft, he'd observed, was really just a large room in an old industrial building, and therefore there were no real bedrooms. Instead, each of the roommates had partitioned off a section to call their own. Roger's was cramped and overflowing with probably-dirty laundry and notebooks and used pens, guitar picks and soda cans. Freddie forced himself to look past all of that and nearly rolled right on top of Mark as he started to stretch.

Blinking hard, he rolls away again in alarm. _What the fuck? _Why would Mark be in his bed? He feels bile climbing in his throat, the first assumption enough to make him violently ill –

_He can't use my body that way, he _can't_, Roger please tell me you didn't –!_

Mark gives a quiet yawn and shifts, drowsily trying to get comfortable. The blankets ride up – he's got a shirt on. A sweater, actually. Possibly two of them.

_Thank fucking God._

When he's sleepy like this, Freddie has to admit that Mark is – kind of adorable. He's younger than him (them) by at least six years, but he's remarkably witty, mature even if he does have a rather naïve disposition at times. His hair is light strawberry, and incredibly messy right now. Despite himself, Freddie reaches down to smooth it away from his face, and Mark catches his wrist with a lethargic smile.

What can he want? What is he doing here? Shouldn't Roger be the one in bed with Mark, if there's something going on between them? Mark would probably hate him if he knew that he wasn't really Roger, and God, he's starting to panic –

But…

Well…

Mark _was _his chess partner. His _willing _chess partner.

He certainly liked Freddie's mind, his jokes, his banter…

Maybe he could like Freddie, as well.

Somewhere deep in the back of his mind, Roger vigorously nods his approval, a sly smile spreading across his face that Freddie can feel like some slippery wave of giddy emotion.

God, he's really not going back, is he?

He's – dare he say it – _happy _here. With Roger. With all of these people who aren't his friends, but could be.

He's happy with Mark.

"C'mere," Mark insists, voice heavy with sleep, pulling on him weakly. "Cuddle. Please."

That, Freddie thinks, he can probably do.


	8. Jamie

He concocts a hasty plan and executes it on Christmas Eve, because it's ironic – death and birth, family and whatever the fuck he's got. When his mother finds him, she'll understand, and she'll regret every sick thing she ever let that man do to her son.

Well. Daughter, to her.

He scowls. Even in death he'll never get what he wants from her, not even acknowledgement.

It doesn't matter, really, because he'll be dead as a fucking doornail when they stick him in a dress for the funeral. If she even bothers to give him one.

Thinking about it quickly becomes a moot point, and in the days leading up to the big event, everything is a silent buzz in his mind. A nothing. Empty anticipation faintly tightens in his gut where the hoarded pills will nestle.

There's no anger left, no anxiety even, no nothing, and it's driving him up a fucking wall.

Where did it all go? How did he get here?

Somebody else should have to pay for making him this way but at this point he can't even muster the will to be indignant.

And on Christmas Eve he sits inside the closet on the floor in a nest of blankets, chessboard tucked neatly beside him. His bedroom door is locked. No one is going to look for him, but if they do, they won't be able to reach him in time. And they won't look for him in here.

In the darkness he stares numbly down at the baggie of miscellaneous pills in his hands, wondering when he'll get up the courage and just do it.

The debate seems to go on for hours, and they each tick by agonizingly slowly. When the light beneath the door goes faint and then disappears altogether, leaving him in lonely darkness, he knows he has to do it now. He fumbles with the cap, fingers clumsy, suddenly nervous.

What will his teachers think? What will his classmates think?

What will that admissions officer from NYU who's been hounding him think?

His head thunks back on the wall and he has to take deep, gulping breaths, eyes squeezed tightly shut. _Don't think, don't think –!_

He must fall asleep that way, because in the next moment, there's a hand nudging him.

His eyes fly open and despair floods his stomach with heavy disappointment. _No! _They can't find him before he's done it, they can't stop him, he has to do it now, he can't go on like this –

"Hey. Hey. Kid."

The voice is familiar, almost, but too deep to be… No. He squints into the dark and tries to make out the face of his "savior", and blinks incredulously.

That's no savior. That's just _him._

Oh, fuck, did he really go through with it? _Am I dead?!_

The moment of panic passes, though, when the white-clad figure wraps his arms around him and jerks him roughly into a hug. Almost without thinking he crushes him back, hardly daring to breathe. This is it… he's really dead, and now he's going to be escorted up to heaven…

Kind of surprising, all things considered, but he'll take it.

"Don't be so fucking reckless," murmurs a voice that only vaguely sounds like his own. It's deepened, and not entirely with age… The man holding him can barely be twenty five, but somehow, he's still more a man than he'd ever imagined himself. "That's my life you're playing with, buddy."

"Are you here to take me to hell?" he asks, because he's getting confused now. He can't really be awake – he must be dead. But he can't remember how he'd managed it… And now he's sitting here conversing with himself as if it's totally normal. "If so, I don't mind if you take your time. I'm plenty warm right here."

Older-Freddie gives him a deadpan look. "Smartass," he mutters, but he seems to be fighting off a reluctant smile. "I thought you'd be a little more anxious."

"I was." Shrugging, Freddie sits back and leans against the wall, feeling the hard edges of the chessboard beneath him as if it's really all that reassuring.

"You know, I'm not here to lead you anywhere. Except maybe back to your common sense." He wrinkles his nose and Older-Freddie gives him another look, this time as if he knows exactly what he's thinking. _Maybe he does? _"I would ask what the fuck you're thinking, but I know that already. I'm here to tell you to stop dicking around. Everything's going to be fine, so you'd better flush those things – I'm not leaving until I see you do it."

It sounds like it's supposed to be a threat. Freddie just blinks up at him, more confused than ever. He's utterly distracted by this man's chest, which is flat. Flat…

He can't be him, then. Unless –

His heart nearly stops as he considers it, excitement bubbling up everywhere – through is pores and up his throat and under his fingernails, bringing his whole body to life like it hasn't been in years now, since before his father had left, since before the first time he woke up and hadn't been able to get out of bed. "Who are you?" he demands.

Older-Freddie looks briefly offended before realization seems to sink in and he smiles, a little more gently. "Yeah. You do get the surgery."

"Does it hurt?" He looks him over doubtfully, suddenly nervous. _None of this matters. You're already dead. Or hallucinating. _"Do you have any feeling left in your nipples?"

"There weren't any complications. The scars even faded after a while." Older-Freddie is looking at him with unbearable understanding now and he wants to throw something at him. Even if it's him, he fucking hates when adults look at him like that. With pity, with faux righteousness, as though they could really understand, or help. "You get the hormones, too."

It's too good to be true. Freddie grimaces. "You're having me on. Fuck off."

"No, really." Seeming to make a decision, Older-Freddie sits back and folds his arms. "But I didn't come here to talk about that. I'm here to make you think."

"Did we ever win the title?" Freddie cuts in, voice demanding and subtly eager. It's getting harder to restrain himself. If this is a hallucination, it's the best one he's ever had in his fucking life, and he never wants it to end. Visions of glory dance like hot sparks at his fingertips, just within reach.

"Of course. What do you take me for? Christ." Older-Freddie snorts, as if there was never a question. Obviously his ego has improved, or else he's just as good an actor in the future as he is now. Still, the doubt is soothed… "Is there anything _else _you want to know?"

He seems impatient, and still with that knowing glint in his eye, but Freddie doesn't care. His blood is pumping now. _World champion. _He's hardly even dared to dream of it in the past year, but it's the only thing he's ever really wanted. Independence, wealth, fame, but above all, proving to himself that he can do it. He can overcome it, everything. He's _strong._

"Do they print our name in the paper?" He hardly even notices he's slipped into plural pronouns, scrambling to his feet. Older-Freddie follows suit with a short laugh, apparently pleased with this development.

"Sure. Frederick Trumper, five time world champion. Florence has the clipping pinned up on the –" He breaks off, contemplative, and eyes Freddie's shining face with satisfaction. "Well nevermind that. You look like you're good to go. Are you going to flush those?"

"Yeah, sure, whatever." Freddie stares at him in something between admiration and choked relief, sure that his eyes are shimmering. His voice is sure as hell wavering, and it's nowhere near as deep as his older self. It sounds pathetic but he _doesn't care._

He wants to ask him everything. Who is Florence? Does he own a cat in the future? Does he have friends, do people like him, do people see him the way he wants them to?

_Do I ever get to feel better?_

It's starting to look like the answer is yes.

Older-Freddie is somber now, reaching out to ruffle his hair. "Get this cut," he says lowly, but the look he's giving the stands is nostalgic. "And keep your head up. It's hard, but it's worth it. You're going to meet people who love you someday and they're going to be worth living for."

"I can't wait for that," Freddie starts to protest, and to his alarm Older-Freddie seems to be fading away, right in front of him. He reaches to grab for his shirt but his hand passes through his chest. Tears well up without his permission, brimming anxiously. "Where are you going? I can't be alone anymore! I can't do it!"

"Then run away, kid." The more it fades, the more the voice sounds like his, and it's unnerving as much as it is comforting. "You're made of tougher shit than you realize. Don't just sit there and take it. Don't let people take advantage of you. You're only going to get to where I am by being a bigger asshole than them. At least for a while."

With that, the closet is dark again. Freddie wakes with a start, a cold sweat sticking his shirt uncomfortably to his back.

_I have to go. I have to __**go.**_

The baggie is warm in his hands. Now that he knows what he has to do, these are useless. His heart aches so much he can't even tell if it's a good thing – but it is, it must be. He's _alive._ Freddie clenches his shaking fist and then releases it, casting the pills into the far corner, where he probably couldn't reach them if he tried.

He takes a deep breath and carefully opens the door, and with a creak, emerges into his room.

This will be the last Christmas he spends here.

He won't be fucking sorry.


	9. Flo

To be honest, Freddie has no fucking idea what's going on when he's shoved bodily into a closet. He's more concerned with where the hell they put his drink.

It's sort of shameful that he's eighteen and he's never had a taste of alcohol before tonight. He's only had two plastic cups full and he's about ready to fall over and possibly take a nap wherever he lands – which is the only reason they'd gotten him into the closet in the first place, without him thrashing and kicking, because _that _he was good at. He's never smoked, either, but at this point the entire room is covered in a thin haze and he couldn't avoid inhaling it if he tried.

Well. That's two firsts down, anyways.

Several hundred to go, probably…

Freddie sometimes wonders what life might have been like if he'd grown up anywhere but where he did, and with anyone other than his downtrodden mother and her string of disgusting boyfriends. Could he ever have been normal? Would he have gone to parties like this one without being dragged?

Speaking of dragged –

"Ow, Freddie –" Florence shoves him, giggling, and he wonders how much _she's _had to drink. It's not like Florence has never been to a party before. She's probably not nearly so woefully underprepared for it all as he was. "Are you okay?"

"I'm…" He blinks into the darkness, struggling to make out her face in the light creeping beneath the door. The sounds of the party are muffled but still, it all roars in his ears like an ocean wave, threatening to pull him under. And now he's in here… alone… with –

His face is unbearably hot. "What the fuck just happened?"

"We're playing seven minutes in heaven," she admits, like she's embarrassed. Her breath smells pleasantly fruity. She's definitely been drinking. Freddie wonders what he smells like and decides that it's probably somewhere between a bar and a sweaty teenager, which he can only just barely deny being. _I'm an adult, damn it._

_An adult who's locked in a closet._

The irony of all of this is catching up to him really fast.

"Well I'm not playing." He scowls, trying to pretend he's not trying to figure out whether or not Florence will know he's staring at her exposed shoulder, where her bra strap has slipped down and her breast is so, so tantalizingly close to being visible…

It's okay if it's in the dark, right? She probably can't tell.

And if she slaps him, well. She's slapped him for less before.

His binder feels incredibly tight and uncomfortably hot and he wants to struggle out of it, but then Florence is going to get ideas and he doesn't want her thinking this was all _his _doing, because it's definitely not…

(He sternly tells himself that his fantasies are not, _definitely not_, being translated into reality by some benevolent god with an interest in getting him laid.)

"Oh, suck it up," she huffs, smiling, and the curve of her lip is more than enough to render him stationary. Forget leaving, then… She reaches up to feel his shoulders, fingers moving up into his hair. "It's just a party game."

Maybe to her. She's been to parties before. Freddie has not. This is all incredibly unfair.

He finds that he's holding his breath, and releases it as quietly as he can, heart pounding. "Um," he says eloquently. "So."

"So all we have to do is make sure we're in a compromising position when they open the door in… five minutes," she murmurs, amusement dancing on the tip of her tongue. He wants desperately to taste it. How much of this is a joke and how much of this is real and is he allowed to touch her, now, when she's pressing her body up against his, because it seems like a really fucking terrible game if he's not, and –

"Stop thinking," she whispers into his ear like an order, and slips a hand up underneath his shirt, palm flat over his belly button.

Obediently, he brings the axe down on the shoddy strategy forming in his brain and clutches at her hips, pulling her close so he can bring their lips clumsily, eagerly together.

Perhaps this isn't what he thinks it might be, and maybe later Florence will laugh about it while he silently cherishes the memory for the rest of his life, but right now he's tipsy and alive and she's touching him and he's touching her, and it's more than he ever could have wanted out of this whole ridiculous experience.

Florence gets his zipper open, and he forgets how to breathe when her fingers slip down the front of his pants.

All in all, he thinks as they stumble lip-swollen and red-faced out of the closet together, he may have to go to the next party he's invited to, after all.

Well…

As long as Florence is going.


	10. Avery

Most of the wolves he knows were bitten as children – defenseless, blameless. Children could not be expected to defend themselves, or to know the same fear and contempt that any respectable adult held in the face of a snarling werecreature.

Any _sensible_ adult would never put themselves in a position to be bitten – most would rather _die. _

If Anatoly hadn't been exceptionally drunk, he probably would have as well.

It's incredibly ironic that he ends up being bitten on the only night in years that he's had more than a glass of wine with his dinner. Anatoly was never much of a drinker. In fact, he can recall at least a dozen separate instances in which his brother had taken the piss out of him for being such a lightweight.

Still, it's his own fault.

He should never have gone out on a full moon.

He _knew _better.

Now, though, lying miserably in the cot Svetlana had set up for him in the shed and staring at the steadily rising moon through the crack of the door, he felt spectacularly sorry for himself.

She had been furious. Completely, utterly disgusted with him – and could he blame her? She was pregnant, they had only just been married a year ago. He had already ruined it, and all for a goddamn drink with his obnoxious, cynical brother.

All of their plans. All of their dreams.

(He probably won't be allowed to play on the international circuit now, at least not without a suffocating degree of government supervision.)

Shifting uncomfortably onto his side, he hunches and turns away from the bright moon searing his retinas, but it's no use. The light of it makes him tremble and sweat; it's been like this for the past week, dizzy spells, tremors. He doesn't think he could string a proper sentence together these past few days even if Svetlana hadn't been giving him the cold shoulder and forcing him to sleep out in the yard like a dog.

He reminds himself, again, hopelessly, that he really shouldn't blame her. She's only doing what's best for the baby.

Privately, though, he wonders if this is what his entire life will be, now that he's tainted.

Anatoly closes his eyes and grits his teeth as another tremor knocks through him, stronger than the last. The moon will be at it's height soon, and that's the part he's not looking forward to – not that he knows much about it. For all that people were scared of wolves, there wasn't a whole lot of public knowledge about them. Not detailed, anyway, and besides that, most of it seemed more legend and fearmongering than real facts.

He supposes he'll just have to learn firsthand.

The shed is old and creaky, unused for the past several years – it wasn't as though either of them had much time or patience for gardening. Now, it's dusty and Anatoly resents it all the more. He tells himself firmly that he deserves it. But it's cold, and his bite – wrapping around the side of his neck like the pair of jaws that put it there – is burning as if in compensation. He reaches a hand up to itch it again and finds that he can't steady it.

A pang of real panic sets in when he realizes that he doesn't have control of his fingers. _Fuck. _What's happening? How long is this going to last? Is he even going to remember it?

His imagination runs wild, and he can see with feverish clarity Svetlana's terrified eyes as he lunges at her, jaws snapping at her throat. She holds her belly protectively, screaming –

_No!_

With a whimper, he rolls out of the cot and onto the floor, scrambling for purchase – for something – deliriously, he thinks that if he finds a rope he might tie himself up, make it so that he can't move much less shove his way out of the shed and into their yard, into their _house. _For all he knows, he's going to turn into a bloodthirsty monster, and he can't bear the thought of waking up with her blood heavy on his tongue.

_I won't do it. I won't._

His hands won't unclench. He whines again, a distinctly canine sound that makes him freeze. He shudders, and turns slowly to face the crack in the door again.

The moon drifts higher, higher…

"I'm not ready!" he sobs, but it's far too late for that – his spine ripples and sickening heat fills his body, a choked sob morphing mid-sound to a pathetic howl. He can _feel _his face elongating. What color there was left drains from the world, and he lies panting on the floor of the shed, fur sprouting coarsely all over him until it's done, and everything is silent.

As the pain ebbs away, he blinks groggily up at the moon.

… _What is this?_

He's not human. He knows that, can tell from the way his tail swishes behind him to the way his ears prick, catching the faint sounds of Svetlana's breathing from the bedroom only a hundred yards away.

He is not overcome with rage, or hunger, or…

_I'm not going to hurt her._

The realization hits him so hard he can't breathe, and then all at once he's springing to his feet, howling with joy. _I'm not going to hurt her! I'm still human!_

_I'm still me!_

Fuck the circuit! Fuck chess, he'd never liked it that much. Fuck Molokov and fuck his brother, fuck them all, he was still him, he was still wonderfully, beautifully human, and he prances around the tight space giddily, his paws skittering on the concrete.

Then, he stops. Listens.

Svetlana is still breathing, but… He takes a breath and huffs, eyes narrowing. He can smell it. Fear. It's got a faint, sour tang to it, like gasoline. Fear. She could hear him – was watching, through the window, wondering as he had what was going to happen – whether she would live through the night, whether they both would.

He glances at the lock on the door. _Fuck it._

Without a second thought (which was, again, exactly how he found himself in this mess to begin with), he backed up and went barreling through the old wood, bursting out into the yard with another triumphant call.

His howl was answered, faintly and jovially, from the woods, and if not for Svetlana's fearful scent he might have gone sprinting off to join them – his people, his brothers, the others who had found that life wasn't so bad, so horrible, as a wolf as they'd been told.

He _wanted _to, he could do it – run away, lope through the woods the whole night long. Stretch his legs by the silvery moonlight.

But Svetlana, watching fearfully from the window, came first.

In what was probably the most ridiculous, responsible decision he'd ever made in his life, Anatoly stands up on his hind legs – it takes a moment and some keen balancing, but he manages it – and waves a paw, grinning lopsidedly, in an imitation of a wave.

The curtains part slightly more. She's looking at him, confused. He can practically read her mind, although he can't yet see her eyes to try. (He wonders, now, what other special perks this condition must come with – ones that no one talked about, too blindly afraid to care about the facts.)

_Sveta! _He tries, but it comes out as a garbled bark. He falls back onto all four paws, his tail wagging furiously, tearing at the dirt beneath his paws excitedly. She was a perfectly smart woman, she would understand. Eventually. He would make her understand.

_We can still be a family._

There were a lot of things wrong with their life, their marriage, but this didn't have to be one of them.

He longed desperately to charge into the house, to run through it sniffing _everything, _to test his senses, but he restrained himself. He would wait for her, or else risk terrifying her, and their unborn child.

He sat down and stared at the part in the curtains, cocking his head, allowing his tongue to loll out the side of his mouth. It felt only mildly ridiculous. Now, transformed, the night is warm and beautiful and charged with potential, better than anything he's ever known. He tries to convey the overwhelming joy of the moment, finds he can't really sit still, unable to stop his ears from pricking and his tail from swishing and his paws from dancing in the dirt.

_Sveta, _he barks again, impatient now. _I am not going to hurt you._

The curtains pull back, suddenly, and she stands there, glowing in the pale light of the moon, staring at him with some expression that in this form he can't readily interpret – disbelief, possibly, and hope against hope.

He picks up a paw again and attempts to wave. Her hand flies up to her mouth, and between her fingers, he thinks that he can see her smile.

He rolls over onto his back, all four paws in the air, and looks at her upside down. Presenting his belly, surrendering. This is all he can do for her; it's up to Svetlana, whether or not he's allowed inside, back into her life – for good. No more fear, no more distrust, no more silent resentment. This could be their new beginning.

He waits for a long moment, watching her. Pleading. He wonders if he has puppy eyes, now, and if they'll work on his wife.

She laughs, muffled through the glass, and unhooks the latch at last.


	11. Miki

Life goes on as usual in the autumn of 1989.

Roger lies in bed all day pining, stroking his guitar, dwelling miserably on his own mortality; Collins meanders from school to school, building small armies of liberal students before being booted for some misdemeanor or other; April is still dead; Benny is still an ass. Mark watches, his camera glued to his face, and wishes he we were brave enough to do some of the things he's always wanted to.

Then, about a month after she breaks up with Mark, Maureen gets a new job.

He doesn't hear about it until late November, because – honestly – he's been studiously avoiding her since long before she left that damning message on his answering machine. It's not as though he can really say that their relationship was a healthy one, or even a good one, but there's just something depressing about being single again for the first time since he was eighteen.

Not to mention, Maureen is the type of girl to move on immediately to greener and more glamorous pastures.

Mark just isn't sure he can bear to see the parade of beautiful people marching in and out of her bedroom.

Not yet. Just… give it time.

They'll be friends again someday, he reassures himself. _Someday._ Hopefully within the next couple of years…

But then she starts _calling _again.

To Maureen's credit, they'd parted on seemingly friendly terms. She had no idea – none at all – that Mark felt so awkwardly about the whole thing, and if she did, she was cheerfully ignoring it. "Mark, I know you're there!" came her voice, loud even through the machine. "I need to know how you feel about Sydney!"

He almost doesn't pick up, but Roger is smirking at him. He grits his teeth and snatches the phone from the receiver, wandering as far away as the cord will let him. "Sorry, I was in the shower." It's not the smoothest lie in the world, but Maureen probably doesn't care enough to call him on it… "What do you mean, Sydney? Australia?"

"Yeah!" Overenthusiastic as ever. Mark winces and holds the phone slightly away from his ear. "Do you want to go? I can get us there for free!"

"Free?" he echoes as though it's a foreign concept. "Australia…? Why – no, _how? _Maureen, that's insane!"

"It's a perk!" He can practically hear her bouncing on the balls of her feet. "Don't you want to go? Joanne said she'd pay for the hotel! It's only for a few days, we can get a little tan, maybe see some coral reefs…"

Joanne. That's right. Her new beau.

Someone is prodding his shoulder, leaning in with his chest to Mark's back, trying to listen in. Mark ignores Roger's owlish curiosity, swatting halfheartedly behind him, and thins his lips. "I don't think _Joanne _is going to be okay with it when she finds out who you're taking… And – a perk of what?"

"My job?" She snorts, and there's a rustling sound that he can't identify. Roger deliberately blows hot air into his ear and he squirms away – unsuccessfully, because the other man has his arms wrapped around his waist now, and he doesn't even have to look back to know he's wearing a shit-eating grin. "Come on, Mark. Think of it as a Christmas present! I can't book until next week, so you might even get to be gone for the holidays…"

She leaves that sentence hanging as if she _knows _that he'd immediately perked up at the idea of having an indisputable reason not to have to go home for Chanukah this year. "Still."

"Pookie!" He can tell she's pouting now. He hates how well they know each other. It's a constant reminder – every time he thinks he's getting over her, something like this happens and his heart stutters. (Although, that might be Roger's freezing hands sneaking up under his shirt.)

"_Bastard," _he twists and mouths, eyes narrowing, but Roger just leans in and blows him a kiss.

"I think I'll pass, Mo. But – thanks." He prepares to hang up, and Roger's hands are out from under his shirt in record time, flashing up to snatch the phone.

"_I'll _go, if he won't," he says brightly, and Mark sends him a scandalized look. "No, it's Roger. Hey! You do so want to sit on a plane with me for twelve hours!" He frowns, chewing on his thumbnail. "I'm fucking hilarious, you'll never be bored."

They squabble for another ten minutes. Mark wanders into the kitchen and goes through the ritual of making himself tea, watching Roger out of the corner of his eye, trying not to smile. Secretly, he really hopes he doesn't get to go. Christmas is lonely enough with just the two of them in town right now; if he's going to be just by himself, he'd almost rather be with his family in Scarsdale.

Almost.

He only catches the last minute of the conversation because Roger is shouting, pumping his fists. "_Fuck _yes! You're amazing. Jesus! I should have been a flight attendant."

He laughs in the next second and Mark can imagine what she'd said to that.

_Sorry, Davis, but you just don't have my rack._

"Sure, whatever. Thanks! I'll force him, don't worry." He's beaming, slamming the phone down and Mark barely has the time to be nervous before Roger comes stalking toward him, a gleam in his eye. It's the liveliest he's looked in months, and he can't help but feel hopeful, even as Roger yanks him up out of his seat by the arm.

"We're going to pack," he declares, and Mark splutters, tugging weakly at his arm.

"What?! Roger! I said I wasn't going!"

"Yes you are. You're going with me. You don't have an excuse." Roger smirks through the dirty curl of his hair in front of his eyes. Mark feels his heart clench again, and this time he's afraid to wonder why. "Come on, Cohen. Where's your sense of adventure?"

Coming from the guy who hasn't voluntarily left the apartment in almost a year now, Mark thinks this is a small miracle.

He struggles to find words.

"I – well I guess…" How can he possibly deny him this? Getting Roger out of his damn room was up there with "avoid Maureen" on his to-do list, and he had to succeed in at least _one _of them today. So that meant…

"Great! We're going to Sydney for Christmas."

Mark blinks, bemused, as Roger dives toward the closet and starts rummaging. He was like an entirely different person.

That might not be a horrible thing. Except –

"Isn't it a little early to pack…?"


	12. Tate

Mark is thankful that looking at other people's wrists is taboo, because if anyone looked at _his_ he'd probably never live it down.

"There's no shame in loving people, Mark," Maureen used to say as she kissed over them – all of them, more than ten, all of them red. He knows that one of them is hers, and that makes this even more depressing. She knows it too, but she doesn't let it interfere with their sex life.

He's glad for that, at least. If he can't have love, he wants to at least have this.

But Maureen doesn't last forever. No one ever does. Even his roommates are slowly pulling away from him, and all that's left is the cold, empty apartment, Roger sulking in the other room, a broken hotplate, and these damning marks on his wrist.

The tally marks appear constantly, have done since he was only twelve. He's afraid to look, sometimes, in the shower or before bed – afraid there will be another. But it's impossible not to get close to people, not to love them. He doesn't know what he's supposed to do. What he must be doing wrong.

Collins had a theory about it, something about pheromones and naturally high levels of something or other. Mark wonders if he was just trying to make him feel better. If he was, it hadn't worked.

They climb up the inside of his forearm, from wrists nearly all the way to his elbows. Red and red and red and red.

He doesn't know what he'd do if one of them changed. Would he be happy? Relieved? Scared out of his fucking wits, more like it.

On Christmas Day of 1989 he wakes up itching the crook of his elbow and groans out loud when he sees it. _Another fucking tally._

God, he was pathetic. Who had he even met yesterday?

The girl downstairs comes to mind – Mimi.

Fuck.

He can't be in love with her, just like he can't be in love with Roger, or Maureen, or – Lord, he hates to admit it – Benny Coffin. He doesn't _want _it. Everything would be so much easier if he could just keep his goddamn emotions in check, and yet it keeps happening.

But he _can't _be in love with Mimi. Roger's got a thing for her – she's got a thing for Roger. It's doomed from the beginning, dead on arrival just like the rest of his love life.

He lies back and stares miserably at the ceiling, and tries not to think about it.

There's nothing he can do. He'll just have to deal with it.

And if it aches a little more to look at Mimi, and at Roger, after that – well, nobody has to know.

It's not the Christmas after the next that it happens.

Roger had practically moved his entire life down into Mimi's apartment before she'd asked about moving in with _them, _and Mark had spent the entire week preceding the holiday helping the two of them lug everything back up the stairs. No one has lived with them since Collins moved out, and adding Mimi's shit to the pile makes it seem almost cheerful.

They set up her tree, and end up having to prop it against a couple of boxes when the stand unexpectedly snaps. The cheap plastic angel twinkles lopsidedly from the top of it, threatening to fall off at any moment.

Despite everything that's happened in the past two years, they _are _happy. There's heat, now, and Maureen and Joanne write regularly from California, where they're staying indefinitely. Collins isn't coming home for Christmas this year, either, but he's alive and he's finally starting to move on. It's all Mark could have asked for, for _all_ of his friends.

Everyone has something to be happy about. Even him. For the past year, since Mimi's dramatic return, there have been no new marks.

He wakes sleepily, early on Christmas morning, and plods to the bathroom. As he's washing his hands, he sees it.

And screams.

"Mark? Jesus, Mark, are you okay?!"

That's Roger, pounding on the door. Mark immediately lurches for it, feeling horribly guilty for reminding him of April, even accidentally. "Mark! Fuck, you're going to give me a heart attack! What's wrong!"

Mark has his hand clutched over the crook of his elbow, shaking his head, white-faced. Mimi appears, looking bleary, at Roger's side. "Qué pasa…?"

She yawns behind her hand. His heart pounds.

Slowly, he looks down and parts his fingers. They're still there. _Two black marks._

Roger grabs his arm and tugs it into the light. He peers owlishly at them. "Oh," he says, dismissively, as if this isn't mind-boggling. "Took it's time, didn't it."

"What?" Mark manages, squeaking, eyes flickering between them. Mimi is hiding a smile now. Both of them are looking at him expectantly and his mind makes the leap with a jarring snap.

Those marks. _Those _marks belonged to Roger… and Mimi.

_Both of them?_

It must be too good to be true – but Roger moves in with a smirk, grasping his chin. "In case you need convincing."

And he's kissing him, and Mark nearly cries, because this is the only thing he's wanted for Christmas for the past fourteen years.

Mimi slides around him and hugs him from behind, nuzzling into his neck. Roger twists his fingers into his hair.

Mark whimpers. _Merry fucking Christmas._


	13. Kiki

The way Hermione's been eyeing him lately, eyes beady and suspicious and maybe a little worried (which he pointedly ignores so that he won't have to feel guilty) has him nearly thinking that he won't be able to sneak out of the common room tonight like they'd planned.

But, for once, fate seems to be on his side.

"Fuck!" Ron hastily points his wands at the flames, leaping from his seat in the middle of a game of Exploding Snap. Several of the first years shriek, along with everyone who had been watching the game, and Harry thinks he hears Seamus cackling triumphantly beneath it all.

He doesn't stick around to find out.

It's not unusual for Harry to disappear from the dormitory and come back well after midnight to stumble into bed, still in his clothes and utterly exhausted. It had started as a restless habit – he'd take the map and his cloak, and he'd wander the halls of Hogwarts like one of the ghosts, bleak and mourning. Sometimes he was numb inside; sometimes, though, the pain of memory radiated from his skull and down his spine, clenching his stomach like a vice.

So many people were dead, because of him. Because he hadn't been fast enough. Brave enough.

Some Gryffindor.

Tonight, though, was a different sort of rendezvous.

He remembers the first time they'd crossed paths in the middle of the night. If Harry felt like a ghost, then Malfoy looked like one. It had seemed a small miracle when the Board of Governors had allowed Draco back at the school for the remedial year. Returning Slytherins were sparse – most of them didn't _want _to return, not after being condemned during the war.

For whatever reason, though, Draco had returned. Most likely to an empty, eerie dorm, and the suspicious glances of his classmates. But he'd done it.

Harry had asked him that night, "Why?" and he had told him, with quiet, tired force behind his voice, that any respectable Potions Master had their NEWTs, and it was really none of his business what Draco did with his life, anyways.

He supposed that he was right, but with a shrug he continued his badgering. He'd followed him all the way back to the dungeons that way, prodding him, faintly amused at the way he'd irritably tried to shake him off. It came with an odd sense of relief when he saw Malfoy disappear through the portrait hole, safe and sound. If Slytherin could ever be called safe.

At least neither of them had earned a detention. An hour in each other's company, and no hexes fired? A record!

Harry snorts to himself, hastily pacing down the corridors in search of the blond. That had been three months ago. They'd known nothing of each other then – had still been shells of who they'd been, before it all.

As it turned out, going through a war together changed people. Brought them together. Even from opposite sides of the thing.

It was nearly midnight and he had to hurry. He guiltily wondered if he could get away with Apparating to their meeting spot – the rebuilding of Hogwarts was far from completed, and the wards were flimsy. Harry had found himself able to Apparate as far as Hogsmeade, and he was sure that the Headmistress wouldn't approve.

Still. It would be worth it.

He didn't want to keep his lover waiting.

Something on the map catches his eye. He darts around a corner just in time, cursing and flattening himself against the wall as Filch comes grumbling through the hall, his mangy cat at his heels.

_Some things never change._

He was nearly there – he swore he could see that white hair in the glimmer of the torchlight. Stuffing the map into the pocket of his robes, he crept along the wall, as fast as he could manage without making a lot of noise.

His friends weren't quite ready, he'd decided, to know about his… affair… friendship… whatever this was. Draco Malfoy? He could already see Ron's horrified, disgusted expression, and hear Hermione's lecture. He shook the hypothetical from his head. No, they weren't ready. Maybe when _he _knew where they were headed, it would be easier to tell them.

Draco was looking around in annoyance, masking his anxiety with a scowl. He leaned against the wall, looking as ethereally handsome as ever, and Harry couldn't resist sneaking up and grabbing his waist, whispering, "Boo!"

Stiffening, the Slytherin shoved him away, hard. "Damn it, Potter! What did I tell you about that?"

Harry stumbled back, covering his mouth to hide a laugh as the hood slipped from his head. He let the cloak pool at their feet and leaned closer again, reaching for him. "Oh, come on. It's all in good fun. I'm here, aren't I?"

"You act like that's such a gift," Draco grumbles, but he lets Harry pull him closer, his hands coming up to rest on his shoulders, long fingers trailing through the hair at the nape of his neck. He sighs, softer now. "You need a haircut."

"So do you," Harry says cheerfully. Both of them had, presumably, not cut their hair since May, and it was about to be January. He whispered a quick _Tempus _and blinked. Ten minutes? That's more time than he'd bargained for. What to do…

"Did you tell your friends who you were off to celebrate the New Year with?" Draco asks with practiced casualness, but Harry knows enough of him now to pause guiltily. Draco frowns, looking as though he might step back. "You didn't."

He knew that he was everything Harry should never associate with. A Slytherin, a Death Eater. An aristocrat. Harry should have known he'd be insecure. It wasn't as though he hadn't voiced all of these things before.

He reached up to cup his face. "Well, there's still time," he murmurs, eyes falling to the blond's pale pink lips. Color faintly creeps up Draco's neck as he leans closer, breath wafting over his face. "If you want, we can go tell them ourselves."

Draco looked vaguely as though his heart might stop, staring at Harry with wide, guarded eyes. "You're sure." It's heartbreakingly uncertain.

Harry pauses, remembering what he'd thought about his friends just moments earlier. Perhaps he'd jumped to conclusions. After all, they were adults now. He'd saved Draco's life, and Ron hadn't given him any shit for that. Neville would certainly be welcoming, despite everything, and Hermione was more mature than any of them.

And if they didn't like it, well. They could go and stuff it.

If Harry loved him, then Draco was here to stay.

"Absolutely," he says, and kisses him just chastely. Draco leans into him gratefully, curling his fingers around one of Harry's wrists.

"I'm holding you to that, Potter," he whispers.

Harry grins as he pulls away, and tugs at his waist.

"Come on, then. We've got eight minutes."


	14. Michelle

Things have been off-kilter for them since the match in Cleveland.

Freddie had taken gracefully to his new position as Anatoly's second, if only because it gave him an excuse to be with him – and an excuse to wipe him on the chess board, once in a while, which was what made the pairing ideal. The challenge never ended, which suited him just fine.

Two years passed since Bangkok. Anatoly continued to avoid his wife. Florence disappeared off the face of the earth.

Then, at some run-of-the-mill tournament in Ohio, the Russian had gotten up for the break – and promptly collapsed, knocking the pieces from the board.

Of course, it's been nearly a year since that incident, but Freddie can still feel the echoes of that panic in his very bones whenever he looks at his partner, so gaunt and pale, his hair still just growing back in a soft black fuzz after the chemo had killed it. No more curls, and very few crooked smiles to be had, these past few months.

This wasn't what Freddie had signed up for at all.

He can't say he minds the break in their sex life. He'd gone most of his life without sex and it had never bothered him. With Anatoly, he missed the intimacy more than anything. Lying together at night now was restless – Anatoly shivered, shuddered, threw up, occasionally, stumbled – or fell – from bed in the middle of the night.

Stomach cancer, they said, eating him up from the inside. For nearly a year before his collapse, it had been festering, and Freddie hates himself, irrationally, for never seeing it.

Things are strained. No, worse, they're just… quiet. Acceptance is quiet. Freddie _will not _accept this, though, no matter what asinine reasons Anatoly comes up with for him to just sit back and wait for the end with him.

_He _was the one who had pushed for treatment. Surgery, anything. Chemo. He regrets that one, a little, when Anatoly starts having trouble remembering what he ate for breakfast, when he gets paler and paler and holds his stomach and stares bleakly at the ceiling like a dying man. Freddie shudders and shakes the image violently from his head.

_No. _He _wasn't _dying, wasn't allowed to.

Gastric cancer is, apparently, uncommon in the US. There are few surgeons who know exactly what to do with it, and at minimal risk. Anatoly glances to the phone when they tell him, and from the look in his eyes, Freddie knows he's thinking of his children. Of Svetlana.

They deserve to know.

They don't deserve to worry.

They'd had this argument a dozen times, and every time Anatoly had stormed off, slammed their bedroom door, and left Freddie to worry silently, angrily, for hours until he emerged only to paint the inside of their toilet bowl.

It was a nasty surgery, and Anatoly was far from recovered. As December deepened and darkened, icicles in the windows and daylight dwindling, he would lie on the couch and stare at nothing, a book lax in his hand, the chessboard untouched.

At this rate he'd lose his title – but Freddie somehow doubted that that was his first priority, right now.

Hell, even _he'd_ been able to forget chess for this.

Freddie sometimes wonders what his life would have been like, had he found someone to love like this earlier in his life.

Everything is tests and treatments and bills, bills, for the surgery and for the medication and for the long distance phone bills as Anatoly finally musters up the courage to dial his wife's number and speaks, for hours, in low tones, in Russian, so Freddie can't understand but he hardly needs to. He thinks that the faint sounds of Svetlana's sob from the receiver will haunt him for the rest of his life.

He'd never really liked the woman, per se, but he could empathize.

The aftermath of the surgery – a subtotal gastrectomy, said the surgeons, which sounded nearly as disgusting as it was – was a mess. Anatoly, who had already eaten little, survived on liquids for nearly a month. The New Year was fast approaching and they had weakly joked that he'd have to forego the champagne, this year.

But not next year, Freddie promised him. Anatoly had only given him a tired look.

The tests still hadn't come in, and the question hung in the air. It was _aggressive _cancer, and if it came back –

Freddie wasn't sure their bank account could take it, and neither could his mind.

He wondered idly as Christmas approached whether it would be appropriate to buy Anatoly a gift this year. He'd probably accept it, but would he be glad? Probably not. He'd silently simmer about it for the next week – that Freddie had wasted time and money on him, him, who was probably dying, would be gone by Valentines Day.

That was a pessimistic way of looking at things, but Anatoly was a pessimistic person. There was no real evidence that he'd be dead anytime soon.

They just had to wait for those damned test results.

Freddie felt as though they'd been balanced, teetering, on needlepoint for the past two months. He was terrible at waiting – for a chessman, his patience was terrible. At least in professional chess there was the timer, a _limit _to the waiting. Here in the real world he had to at least feign patience, or else he'd probably throw himself from the roof tomorrow.

And Anatoly, the sick fuck, would probably blissfully follow him.

Scowling, Freddie shakes the snow from his hair and digs for his keys as he approaches the door, mail clamped carelessly in one gloved hand. Goddamn Sergievsky, that – that self-sacrificing _asshole. _Where was his survival instinct? He just wanted to shake him until the man he'd once competed ruthlessly against returned to smack him silly, and maybe fuck him over th-

He coughs, flushing, and shoves the door closed behind him, leaning against it. No use continuing with that thought. Not anytime soon…

As he began to peel away his layers, he opened his mouth to call out that he was home – and froze, staring at the envelope in his hand.

A status report. It must be. Why hadn't they just called?

Freddie feels as though he might have to swallow his heart, it's climbed up so far in his throat. He races into the living room and finds Anatoly squinting at the newspaper in the light of the fireplace, halfhearted and looking exhausted. He doesn't wait for him to greet him, just shoving the envelope into his hands.

"It's for you," he explains hastily at Anatoly's startled, suspicious look. The Russian frowns and looks back down to the envelope, carefully peeling it open with thin, unsteady fingers.

It seems to take him an eternity to read it. Freddie squirms on the spot, struggling not to just try and read it upside down. _Don't be rude. _Anyways, what if it was bad news?

Anatoly licked his lips. He glanced up at Freddie carefully.

"I'm in remission," he murmurs, and a small smile graced his lips, tired as it was. Freddie had to sharply resist the urge to tackle him back onto the cushions. Instead he gingerly knelt beside him, cupping his neck, grinning.

When he's finished kissing him – and Lord, Anatoly had _kissed, _fingers in his hair desperate and demanding and life-affirming – he presses their foreheads together and smirks.

"Maybe champagne this year after all?"


	15. Ian

"Roger." Mark blinks and pauses, awkwardly, unaccustomed to saying his roommate's name out loud – or talking to him at all.

His face is incredibly close, and he's smirking, and Mark doesn't quite know what's going on, so he just asks, "What are you doing?"

"Mistletoe." Still looking ridiculously smug (that's not unusual), Roger shakes the little plastic red berries over his head again. "It's tradition. Newest roommate gets a kiss from the second newest. No getting out of it."

He says it all very matter-of-factly and that makes it even more confusing. Mark just prods the plastic, biting his lip. "… This is holly, though."

"What?"

Roger's face snaps into a scowl and Mark takes an instinctive step back. Behind him, Collins, Benny and Maureen are snickering to themselves. He would probably be more amused if he weren't afraid he was about to get his face pounded in. _Damn it, why do I always have to open my mouth…_

"That's holly," he says slowly, almost apologetic, and points again to the berries. "Not mistletoe. Mistletoe has white berries."

"What the fuck – no it doesn't!" Incensed, Roger turns to the others for help but Collins waves him away, choking on his laughter. He turns back, obviously trying not to look doubtful. "It said mistletoe on the package!"

"Didn't you get it from the dollar store?" Maureen calls, grinning, and he flips her off without even looking back.

Mark shifts awkwardly, wondering if he should take this opportunity to dive for his bed – or the door. God knows when Roger set his mind on something he didn't sleep until he got it, and if he was set on kissing Mark, the filmmaker didn't stand a chance.

Not that he'd _mind _Roger kissing him… but in front of everyone else?

And as a joke.

He shakes his head. No way. He's not going to embarrass himself like that. Roger will just have to kiss someone else.

"You can go ask the florist down the street, if you want… they'd probably know," he offers lamely, taking a careful step back and hoping Roger wouldn't notice. No such luck. His eyes snap to Mark's feet, glowering and freezing him in place.

"You're not getting out of this, Cohen," he threatens, and Mark stumbles a step backwards in a wild attempt to dodge the first grab.

The cat-and-mouse game ends before it can really begin, with both of them toppling to the floor, an ungainly, writhing pile of limbs and Mark's yelps.

"Roger! Roger I said _get off!"_

"It's a goddamn tradition, Cohen, show some respect!"

"_Collins!"_

Collins gave a little wave, smirking and perfectly content to keep watching from the sidelines. Mark clawed at the linoleum, trying to break free – but Roger was at least ten pounds heavier than him, mostly because he was taller, damn him, and he had him pinned in seconds, unbearably smug once more.

"You're making this harder than it has to be," he murmurs hotly into the filmmaker's ear, effectively reducing him to a red, stammering puddle.

_Oh my God, oh my God, he's on top of me, he's going to kiss me –_

Mark is suddenly, obscenely glad for the awkward two weeks he'd spent kissing Nanette Himmelfarb behind the Jewish Community Center in Scarsdale his senior year, because he can't imagine how humiliating this would be if it were his _first kiss._

Not that he's probably very good, anyways…

Maureen is still laughing somewhere behind him and he desperately wishes she would just leave so he could at least pretend he wasn't humiliated.

_I thought she liked me, _he can't help thinking, petulantly. _Guess not._

Roger grabs him by the shoulders and tries to wrench him over onto his back, and Mark almost goes willingly before he realizes that he has control of his wrists again and pushes himself up off the floor so suddenly that Roger goes tumbling off him with a loud curse. The laughter gets louder, and Mark scrambles for the partition that marked his bedroom, diving for his bed.

Unfortunately, Roger decides that it would be appropriate to follow him.

He's backed into a corner and he knows it, but at least now there's no one watching them. (No one that he can see, anyways.) He edges warily toward the wall, breathing hard, prepared for anything – a punch to the face, first of all, because Roger is hobbling and he's pretty sure that's his fault.

The faux holly had disappeared beneath the couch during their scuffle, but Roger didn't seem to be deterred by that.

He huffed and stood there at the foot of his bed, hands on his hips, looking almost… petulant. "You're difficult," he accuses, jabbing a finger in his direction. His nails are currently sparkly black and it's making it hard to take him entirely seriously.

Mark nearly swallows his tongue. "I'm sorry, I just – It's not that I don't w- wa-" He cuts himself off, face flaming, but it was too late to keep Roger from understanding and he watched helplessly as understanding flooded the guitarist's eyes, making them gleam.

Uninvited, he crawls up into Mark's bed and straddles his lap, pushing their noses together. Mark's head is swimming. He's afraid to breathe, with Roger close enough to smell his breath. _Did I brush my teeth this morning?_

"Just between you and me, then," Roger suggests in that low, silky voice he's perfected for the stage, except this time there's no one else to hear it but Mark, just Mark and Roger on top of him, fingers curling around the back of his neck, calloused and strong and warm and oh God, Maureen is probably filming this with _his camera –_

Roger kisses him very, very softly, and he chokes on the inhale. Smiling against his lips, Roger kisses him again, stroking his hair before letting his fingers trail down to his shoulders… his sides… his waist.

He murmurs, without breaking away, "If you think this is bad, imagine how it was for me. I had Benny."

Mark laughs, then, loud and genuine, and leans forward to kiss Roger soundly. Somehow, that _did _make him feel a little better, and this was ridiculous. With his anxiety ebbing, it seemed more an opportunity than anything.

And so they kissed, and kissed, and Roger may have slipped a little tongue in there, but it was all in good fun.

After all, it _was_ a tradition. Who was he to break it?


	16. Aire

It becomes a regular thing, and that in itself makes Enjolras look skeptically, hopelessly, at his own obviously pitiable judgment.

It happens every week like clockwork, after he admits late one night – and perhaps more tipsy than he'd meant to be, at least in public – that he is not the angelic, infinite pillar of justice and fairness and damnable _goodness _that everyone thinks.

Grantaire, with his shit-eating grin and his shot glass raised mockingly in a toast, doesn't seem too disturbed.

He supposes that if anyone were to find out about his faults, he'd want it to be Grantaire. Combeferre has always known about him – his impatience, his subtle prejudices that he just can't be rid of, or can't be assed to try hard enough to be rid of. Grantaire understands what it is to disappoint. To fear disappointment. He may want everyone to think otherwise, but Enjolras knows.

Grantaire doesn't try because he fears failure. Enjolras tries because he fears the disappointment of the people who will look at him if he doesn't, shaking their heads.

They understand each other that way, and that's that.

So, somehow – _somehow, _he's still not entirely sure what had possessed him, although he's obscenely glad that it had – he ends up inviting Grantaire back to his apartment on New Years Eve.

He wants to be away from the noise and from everyone he knows. From the celebration. Enjolras has always had trouble celebrating this particular holiday, mostly because of the uncomfortable, insidious expectation that came with it – resolutions. Enjolras couldn't make a good enough resolution to save his life. No matter what he did, what he accomplished, he would still at the end of the year feel that he could have done it better, or more, or...

And then Grantaire would interrupt his hopeless rambling with a snort, and chuck a balled up piece of paper from the floor at his "insufferable, blond" head.

That was another thing he liked about having Grantaire around. He never hesitated to call him out when he was being… what did he call it? Ridiculous, self-pitying, sullen, privileged –

The list went on.

He wonders what the hell he finds charming about being insulted, and then wonders that he just called R _charming, _even if it was in his head.

So now, every Saturday night, instead of studying or planning or writing a speech, Enjolras opens his door and lets R in with a six pack and a grin, and they sprawl across his living room together and…

Well, talk shit, basically.

It starts out with some thoughtless comment. "Courf needs a fucking attitude check." He goes bright red, when he realizes he's said it out loud, but Grantaire has choked on his beer and there's no going back.

As it turns out, though, Grantaire has plenty of dirty secrets of his own.

Apparently sharing _does _have some appeal.

And that's how it starts. It ranges from things as petty and pathetic as "I cheated on my calculus final" to "I used to have a humongous crush on Combeferre", and Grantaire watches him with huge, dark eyes, as if he's seeing something amazing – unfathomable – the crumbling of some ancient statue that Enjolras never wanted to be, anyways.

"I didn't come to the beach last week because of my scars," he offers suddenly, knocking Enjolras straight out of his reverie. He blinks, narrowing his eyes, but doesn't argue.

_Scars _can only refer to one thing. He doesn't know how to feel.

"No one would have said anything," he tells him, although when he thinks about it, Jehan probably would have. "You know none of us would judge you for that, Grantaire."

"And risk a party of you coming to my house in the middle of the night to steal all of my pointy objects?" He snorts and clinks their bottles together, and Enjolras is hard pressed to contain a smile. This doesn't seem like a smiling occasion – but then again, it doesn't seem like something that should be an _occasion_ in the first place, and it is. "No thanks. I need my kitchen knives, you know. How else am I supposed to cook for you?"

There was another of Grantaire's hidden talents. Enjolras regrets, the first time he bites into one of R's cookies, never bothering to get to know him like this before.

He's going to fix that.

He does seem to have fixed that by now, though. It's New Year's Eve, and probably Grantaire's fiftieth visit, and he knows his favorite color and his favorite drink and which of his professors he stares dreamily at in class when he bothers to show up.

And Grantaire knows all of that about him.

And he doesn't know what the hell this feeling is in the pit of his stomach but he doesn't know if he ever wants it to end.

They're tipsy, but not too much. The drink of choice tonight is champagne and they haven't really gotten into it yet, just waiting for the ball to drop. The t.v. is on mute, but the celebration in Times Square looks as crowded and extravagant as ever.

"Bahorel knows, and he's never stolen your utensils," he points out, instead of acknowledging the fluttering tremor in his throat. It's easier. Grantaire is watching him oddly now, not in a bad way, but…

"He wouldn't. He knows I could kick his ass. We used to box," he says without even a smirk. Forever refusing to be proud of his own accomplishments. Enjolras tries to contain a frown, but from the curious look on R's face, he's not entirely successful.

He chooses that moment to slip off of the couch cushion that he's been perched on all evening and fall gracelessly to the floor, half in Grantaire's lap. The flush he can feel climbing his neck is worth the way Grantaire's hand comes to rest at the small of his back.

"Sorry," he manages, but he doesn't try to pull away. The discussion is already fleeing his mind in favor of all of those pleasant, trembly little signals. "Um."

The countdown flashes on the screen, but neither of them pay any attention.

Grantaire is _looking _at him, in that way he used to sometimes catch him doing at the café. Except this time it's more human, and he understands it without really understanding it, and their faces are _incredibly, _uncomfortably close.

He swallows, wide-eyed, wondering if he should pull back.

"Don't you dare," R breathes, and his eyes are just as wide, and Enjolras leans in that extra inch and a half and their lips are nearly brushing now.

Grantaire shifts slightly as if to make room in his lap, and the t.v. suddenly bursts into sound. "Damn it!" he curses, fumbling for the remote under his ass. Enjolras can't stop laughing, almost hysterical, and it doesn't even cross his mind that the moment might be ruined.

Even if it were, there was always next week. The week after that.

"Where were we," Grantaire mutters, half-smiling sheepishly when he's managed to find the mute button again. Enjolras reaches up and hooks his arms around his neck, smiling lazily the way he only ever dares to in Grantaire's company.

He could definitely get used to this – this – having a best friend thing, or whatever it was.

In fact, he already has.


	17. Jeremy

"Freddie, that was incredibly immature."

"It was necessary." Freddie is stubborn, even as he's escorted – as is mall policy – out of the small, tidy "cell" that he'd been delegated to an hour ago by an exasperated mall cop with very large biceps. He'd spent most of his time in the cell eyeing them from between the bars, wondering if it would be possible for him to negotiate his bail if he gave the guy his number.

He'd discarded the idea after watching the child's simpering mother flirt with the man under the guise of "thanking" him for rescuing her child from that delinquent (read: Freddie), for at least ten minutes before she'd been forced to leave with her whining, sticky-fingered son.

Fucking _straight people_. Why did they have to ruin his every passing fantasy?

So he'd waited, sullenly, for another forty minutes until Florence had finally shown up, looking visibly harassed and borderline amused at the sight of Freddie slumped dejectedly against the bars like a kicked puppy.

"What, exactly, was necessary about ripping the beard off of Santa?" she demanded, at her wit's end already. She'd been called in the middle of a meeting and had had to cut it short, and she'd be damned if she was going to let Freddie _ruin _a perfectly good business opportunity.

He just smirked sideways at her and swept his bangs out of his eyes, looking rather pompous. (that was admittedly probably the purpose of the motion)

"Well, their parents weren't going to tell them – who better than me?" he asked, nonchalant as could be. Florence wonders if some of the women that they passed were really still glaring at him, or if she were just imagining it. "I have nothing to lose."

"Frederick Trumper, fountain of youthful wisdom?" she muttered acerbically, but he either didn't hear her or pretended that he hadn't.

The parking lot was an absolute mess. Half of her commute had been spent just trying to find a spot, which she'd promptly forgotten, and when they emerged from the building and into the crisp air she stared out over the glittering sea of parked cars in despair.

If she'd had her way, she would have avoided the mall for the duration of the Christmas season. Her shopping, of course, had been done over a month ago.

But Freddie had a habit of gleefully throwing a wrench into _all_ of her plans.

"_My _parents never bothered with that Santa bullshit. I don't have the sentimental attachment," he explained patiently, watching her out of the corner of his eye, as if waiting for approval. Despite himself, Freddie did always give himself away like that. He could be as contrary as he liked – Florence knew that he was desperate to get a reaction out of her, good or bad.

He did prefer the good reactions, though. Especially when they ended with sweat and salt and panting breaths.

She cleared her throat and her mind, grabbing his wrist and marching him bravely into the lot.

"Because you had model parents, didn't you?" She sighs, not even bothering to listen for his answer. _He trips over his own arguments. He'd never last a day on the debate team._

He turns to give her a withering look, but somehow refrains from making a nasty comment. In the early days of their friendship, Freddie has been irrepressibly quick to anger, but several years in he'd finally learned a few things.

Not enough, apparently.

"You don't understand," he sighed, deeply, as if she were missing some big picture. "Kids shouldn't be lied to. They need to know they can't trust their parents."

Florence grimly suspects the beginnings of a horrid migraine. "Some people _do _have decent parents, Freddie. Mine were nice enough."

"They weren't your real parents, they don't count," he scoffed.

_Aggravating. Self-absorbed. Piece of shit._

Good Lord, one of these days she really is going to knock him out.

The car is in sight. With a new, triumphant determination she increases her stride and Freddie pants a little in his effort to keep up.

"I was doing a good thing!" he insists, pouting at her intensely as if he didn't know she was immune by now. "In the spirit of Christmas!"

"Freddie," she said slowly, as they came to a stop by the driver's door. She pushed him up against it and met his eyes steadily, slowly arching one perfect eyebrow. "Stop talking."

With her lips on his, he didn't have any objections to raise.


	18. Anna

A snowflake drifts miserably down and lights on the tip of Mark's nose. He grimaces and reaches up with one gloved hand to brush it off.

It feels like his limbs weigh him down like dumbbells. He hates this. He hates everything about this, about himself. He'll never escape it. Not for as long as he lives here, anyways. Not as long as he doesn't even fucking have _heat _in his shitty apartment.

It's always worse, this time of year.

There's a deeper chill in the air that only he can feel, which makes his face a mask and his fingers tremble, and his voice shrivel up into nothing.

Roger hates the fall, but Mark hates the winter.

In fact, Mark and Roger are more similar than they often liked to admit, although it was obvious to anyone who had ever been alone with the two of them. They were each other's complements; and beyond that, they operated almost like one unit half of the time, Mark and then Roger and the Mark and then Roger, just getting things done, saying things that need to be said, an endless cycle in tandem. It was all so smooth and practiced.

It's like a dance with them, he dimly realizes.

It was, sort of, his only remaining secret. The winter weight he carried. Roger had to know, but nobody else… Mark didn't want to _worry _them.

He remembers how his mother had worried, and his sister, the first winter it had happened.

He remembers spending his entire adolescence in doctors' offices – in waiting rooms, in lines at the pharmacy picking up prescription after prescription.

He remembers a long line of very condescending people with degrees talking down to him over a clipboard, telling him rather than listening. That had been the worst of it. He'd finally stopped going, when he'd turned eighteen, left town and his prescription and never looked back.

(Roger had found out, though, and it was back to the pharmacy.

He can't decide if he's still petulant about that or if he's just grudgingly grateful.)

In the end, he's glad he's poor sometimes. Otherwise he might not have an excuse to ignore his mother's calls, ignore his doctor's calls, forget to pick up his prescription every couple of weeks.

_We're trying to cut down on the phone bill._

_I can't afford a visit this month._

_I don't need them._

It goes on and on and on – and Roger just sighs and pats him on the back, or shoves him, depending on what the occasion calls for, and picks up the phone _for _him.

For someone who despised human contact, Roger sure was willing to play Mark's caretaker when he thought he needed to.

The inside of the building isn't much warmer than the street, but at least there's no wind knifing at him through his threadbare jacket. Mark grumbles curses under his breath and tries to rub the life back into his fingers as he climbs the stairs, sluggishly, one at a time. There are times that he likes living on the top floor, but there are others – every day, actually, at least at this time of year – that he resents the eight flights of stairs.

He can barely drag himself down them, let alone up. But it has to get done.

Mark is very, very used to doing things for the sake of getting them done, and this is no different.

He tells himself that, six flights up, with is lungs burning and his knuckles white on the freezing metal railing, legs leaden. Besides, Roger would _kill _him if he just curled up here and went to sleep.

He only knows that because he's done it before – but that's beside the point.

By the time he reaches the door he's more than happy to take a nap on the doormat. He manages to stumble two feet inside and directs himself to his mattress without pausing to lock it again. Roger looks up from his paper – or, at least, Mark thinks he does, but he doesn't turn to look and confirm it, groaning as he collapses into bed like it's the only real thing in the world.

There's a rustling, and then footsteps. He presses his face into the pillow and tries to succumb to the heavy buzzing in his head.

"Let me die," he groans as Roger hauls him back into a sitting position, slumping against him, refusing to hold up his own weight.

"Bad day?" Mark can tell without even looking that Roger is raising his eyebrow at him. He almost smiles at that, but in the end he just tucks his face into his neck and exhales loudly, nuzzling there like a cat.

Once upon a time he'd had some kind of dignity around his roommate, but at this point… well, it's just them, and Roger is arguably as pathetic as he is.

"Right," Roger sighs. His fingers are carding through Mark's hair, and the sensation makes him boneless, sinking into Roger's lap gratefully with an unintelligible mumble. He almost doesn't hear Roger's next question – he has to be prodded to respond. "Take your meds?"

His voice is gruff, but Mark knows he's more concerned than he wants to let on. He always is.

People have some weird misconception of Roger as some self-absorbed prick of an ex-junkie. Mark will never understand it. Roger worries and fusses over him more than his _mother._

He _is _a prick, just not in the way everyone thinks.

Mark feels himself frowning guiltily. He doesn't open his eyes. "Did _you?_"

Roger smacks his arm. "Yes. For once. So you have to. Come on, Cohen."

It goes like this every day. If one of them does it, the other one has to – it's how they've been guilting each other into taking their fucking medication for over two years now, and as much as Mark loathes it, he knows Roger's got him twisted around his finger.

Missing his medication usually just means a headache… but if Roger misses his, he could _die._

He starts to make a half-hearted excuse. "I just got home, though –"

Roger dumps him off his lap unceremoniously and stands over him, hands on his hips. "Do I have to go get the fucking bottle for you?" he demands, and Mark stares sheepishly up at him for a moment before nodding, feeling his lips curve up at the corners despite himself.

Throwing his hands up, Roger exits his bedroom huffily and goes to rummage loudly in the kitchen. Their pill bottles are side by side on top of the microwave, but Roger always insists that he drink – and eat – something with it, reminding him impatiently of the on-an-empty-stomach gag reflex that they both know he hasn't been able to kick yet.

His lips twitch again, and he realizes the heaviness in his limbs has disappeared. He sits up on his elbows cautiously and peers toward the kitchen, smiling bemusedly at Roger's savage attempts at making him a sandwich.

How would they ever get by, without each other?

Sometimes he thinks he'll never smile again, and then he comes home to Roger.

Sometimes he thinks Roger will never smile again, but then he'll say something inane and sarcastic and Roger will laugh and…

Well. This is his life.

"Hey, Rog," he calls, and Roger looks up from the mutilated pieces of jam-covered bread, still scowling. "It's Christmas this week."

"Yeah?" He snorts and looks down at his creation, attempting to fold it. "Aren't you Jewish?"

"Fuck off. What do you want?" Mark laughs, and wonders at the sound of it.

Roger's eyes gleam. Mark is groaning before he even says it.

"I want you to _take your fucking pill."_

"Oh, shut up –" He sighs, dramatically, and he holds out his hand mock-expectantly. "Am I ever going to get to _eat _that?"

This time of year will always roll around again, and it will always be hard.

But they'll muddle through. Together, as always.


	19. Delenn

It was strange not to feel constantly afraid, but Veronica supposed that was just a part of the adventure.

The aftermath was more than a flash of fire and J.D.'s blood splattered all over the football field. It was waking up in a cold sweat to the sound of his voice ringing inside her skull, endlessly begging, that same, weaselly voice. "Please, Veronica, this was meant to be!"

In her dreams he would extend his hand, and against her better judgment, helpless, she would take it and let herself be pulled into the blast.

It was just as well that she wasn't always alone when she woke.

She has no idea how it happens, but somehow Heather – Heather Mcnamara, because she still couldn't look Duke in the eyes after everything that had happened their senior year – moves slowly, gently, easily, into her new apartment.

Her parents had helped her with first and last month's rent, of course. They may not have known _everything _about her traumatic few months as J.D.'s unwitting partner in crime, but they knew that their daughter had some serious psychological qualms, and that space would do her good. Just… not too much of it.

Which is how Heather had found her, in the first place.

Oh, she hadn't _meant _to cut her remaining friends out of her life the moment the term was over, but with no impending sense of doom – and no acceptance letters worthy of notice – Veronica hadn't had much motivation to reenter the world. It took her mother's prodding for her to so much as consider the concept of living alone, but once she'd acclimated to the suggestion she'd found herself completely fixated on it.

Alone. Solitary, independent, without any prying eyes or listening ears to hear her wake up screaming.

It had lasted two weeks and nine long shifts at the at the front desk of the town hall, and then Heather had showed up, sweet as can be and with an enormous _cake _in her arms,on her brand new doormat.

"Veronica!" She'd screeched, and had nearly tipped the tray on both of them flinging herself into her friend's startled arms. "I was so _worried _about you!"

And she had been worried, because Heather was a worrier, and because, Veronica thought sheepishly, she had good cause to. When she showed up again that weekend with Martha in tow, she found out that it wasn't just her – it was everyone who knew her, anxiously waiting for news that Veronica Sawyer had clawed her way back out of the hell-pit she'd dug herself into in her senior year.

It hadn't been an entirely smooth transition. Conversation was, at first, superficial, and then stilted, but Heather had always handled her social ineptitude well, and Martha couldn't care less if she was quieter than usual so long as she'd still let her sit behind her and braid her hair, before her morning classes, wistfully reminiscing about their childhood.

Just when she'd begun to get used to being alone, Heather had come barreling into her life again on her parent's tip-off.

Strangely enough, she didn't mind as much as she thought she might.

On the downside, the apartment wasn't often quiet anymore… and her cat had taken a shine to Martha so quickly she was a little worried that he might try to follow her home one of these days. The little tubs of Ben&Jerry's she'd been stocking her freezer with also didn't stand a chance with her two uninvited guests constantly invading her kitchen.

But the company wasn't… so bad.

She barely heard J.D.'s voice anymore, that insidious whisper just behind her.

Well. During the day.

The nights had been truly awful, for weeks – months – after the incident, but Veronica remained tight-lipped.

And then.

And then, Heather had _kissed her._

It was unexpected. It was – intoxicating.

After J.D. had touched her she had never thought someone would wash away the invisible stains – on her body, on her soul. But Heather had.

Gentle, soft, her kisses and her murmured words of affection, her infectious smile, the smoothness of her skin. It was all so different. It was nothing like her first. Heather was no J.D. – she wasn't here because she was damaged, because she needed someone to corrupt or someone to live for.

She just cared.

She just loved, without obligation, without life or death.

Veronica reflects later, lazily brushing Heather's blonde tangle of hair away from her sleeping face, that she probably owes her parents a thank-you card for sending Heather her way.

Otherwise she'd be spending this Christmas morning alone.

Otherwise, she might still be afraid to close her eyes.

Heather opens hers, miles of blue, serene and hazy. She reaches up to clutch Veronica's hand. "Good morning…"

Her throat feels thick and Veronica swallows past it, internally chiding herself for being so emotional over something so silly and common. "Merry Christmas," she manages, and Heather's eyes brighten instantly. She shoots up out of bed in nothing but her panties.

"CHRISTMAS!"

Veronica covers her mouth to hide a laugh.

Yeah. It's hard to be scared all the time, with Heather here.


	20. Nic

Roger is whimpering by the time it's over, and Mark doesn't even think he realizes it.

Smiling – a bit smugly, maybe, but at least gently – he extracts his fingers and wipes them carefully clean with a damp cloth, reaching to stroke the side of his neck in a gentle (perhaps uncharacteristically), reassuring gesture that has the songwriter gone boneless, half in his lap.

It's Christmas Eve, and even Mark doesn't feel the need to extend the scene beyond four hours of torment.

_Happy Christmas. Consider it a treat, _he thinks smugly, but Roger doesn't hear him. He's blissfully satiated and hovering on the edge of exhaustion, still trembling from the force of his last orgasm.

The diagnosis had been a hard blow, and it had meant a month of uncomfortable dancing around that Mark will regret as lost time for the rest of his life. But it hadn't been the end. It couldn't be. They'd been in this together far too long for that.

If Maureen couldn't keep Mark away from Roger, then HIV never stood a chance.

"Can I…" Roger mumbles, obviously struggling with coherency. His hair is overgrown and unruly, plastered sweatily to his forehead as though he's run a marathon. _He might as well have. _Mark slips his hand down to rub his stomach soothingly, the way he always does after a particularly intense scene, encouraging him silently and giving him unspoken permission to speak.

Somehow, Roger manages to string together a sentence, scrunching his nose up as he does so. He grabs Mark's hand on his stomach in a tight, grateful grip. "Can we shower?"

"I imagine the others will appreciate it if we do," he murmurs, allowing him a small smile. Roger brightened as though he'd gotten a compliment out of that, somehow, sitting up on his elbows.

"Collins' bus isn't going to be here for another hour, though," he says slowly, blinking at him curiously – Mark has half a mind to press him back down onto the mattress, whether it's to make him rest or to continue what had been a lovely afternoon, but he restrains himself and just levels an appraising look at him until he lowers his eyes.

"We're going to decorate before he gets here," he explains, patiently, fingers soothingly rubbing his belly again until Roger is squirming and whimpering again. "And I'm going to kiss you all over –" He deliberately lets his voice drop, grinning at Roger's longing expression, leaning over him to press his lips to the top of his head and trailing down, down the side of his face, the column of his neck, to the sharp angle of his collarbone. (he's aware enough to frown at that and make a note of it for later)

"Because you've been such a _good _boy this year."

Roger tips his head back and groans. "Damn it, Cohen –"

He'd never speak to Mark like that in the middle of the scene, so at least he seems to have taken the transition back to reality better than the last time.

"You're _killing _me. Maureen is going to piss herself if you talk like that in front of her…"

Mark waggles his eyebrows, borrowing Roger's trademarked smirk for a moment. "I know, I know. It's not like she doesn't know, though."

In all honesty, Mark hadn't done very much at all to conceal the new dynamic of his sex life from their friends. Maureen should have known what he was into, anyways; she'd managed to walk in on them within the first week, when their routine was still trial-and-error awkwardness, and had come away laughing.

If she only could have seen them today…

Roger nuzzled his stubbly cheek against Mark's hand, trying to pretend it's not a needy gesture. They both know that it is. Mark strokes the pad of his thumb over his lower lip in a silent apology, feeling the tension – however pleasant it had been, in the moment – slowly leaving his shoulders, gentling the slope of them, softening his smile.

Out here, he was shy. He didn't speak, much, and certainly didn't give orders, and Roger mouthed off to him as much as he liked.

It had been a little strange in the beginning, but now he found himself appreciating the routine of it, the variety. Mark could still return to the introvert when they pulled back; Roger could revert back to his foul language and poor hygiene and silly, devious taunts about everything from Mark's overabundance of sweaters to the unhealthy amount of time he spent with his camera rather than people.

Neither one of them _really _had any control over the other. Unless they wanted them to.

Roger is sucking on his index finger when he starts back out of his reverie.

He pulls it back, yanks more like, feeling the force of the flush before it really gets a chance to hit him. "Roger!" he moans, swatting him away, but Roger just leans back into his hands contently, appearing unconcerned that he's being slapped.

Sighing, he scoots closer on the mattress and curls an arm around him, burying his face in his shoulder. Roger reaches up to stroke his back lazily.

They do this now, often. Just lie together.

Mark thinks back to all the years they spent so desperate to prove themselves, to be productive even if it wasn't in the typical way, and wonders what he thought he was going to accomplish. All he had to show for it was ashes of half-written screenplays and boxes of old film reels in the back of his closet, growing dusty.

_But I still have Roger, _he reminds himself, and his lips curve against Roger's neck.

Reluctantly, he breaks the comfortable silence. "You stink," he murmurs. "Go take a shower… I'll get the tree set up."

Roger groans, but he's disinclined to argue when he can still feel the phantom tremors of his orgasm, and Mark barely manages to conceal his smug expression when he starts to peel himself out of Mark's bed and gingerly pads to the bathroom.

It's moments before the shower starts in the next room and Mark lies back on the pillow, staring at the ceiling and breathing, utterly content. This was how Christmas should be. Not gloomy, not freezing, not strangled with the anticipation of life or death.

This year, he doesn't think about his failures, or that he has nothing to show for another year's dreadfully boring toil.

He's awfully comfortable. He doesn't particularly want to get up, now, but if he doesn't…

Well, if he doesn't, then Roger may take it upon himself to exact revenge for his hypocrisy. Mark grins to himself at the prospect and settles in to wait.

Maybe the decorations won't get done before the others get here, after all.

That's okay. They'll have more than enough fun doing it together.


	21. Chelsea

Angel had originally proposed it, which of course meant that it would be immortal.

"Shh. Stay still." And she'd kissed him, lightly, on the lips, eyes dancing, and Mark had stumbled backwards with his face flaming, and Collins had _laughed._

"Your turn!"

It's been a while since anyone heard Collins laugh like that.

No worries, though. Christmas was coming.

It was a little unorthodox, admittedly. But everything about them was. Each Christmas, no matter how far they'd scattered during the year, the six of them – their little bohemian family – still ended up back together again beneath the forever-broken skylight in Mark and Roger's apartment.

In honor of the first time, it was Mark who kicked it off every Christmas Eve. Despite the fact that Angel hadn't lived to see her tradition carried on they carried her torch faithfully. It was almost like a game.

But games weren't quite this serious, were they?

With half of them dying and Angel conspicuously missing, except in the occasional sad, laughing comment, there was little room left for anything trivial. They had to make use of the time they had left together.

That realization alone was horribly sobering. Luckily, they had something much more entertaining to dwell on.

Such as Mark attempting to subtly – but not really – lure Maureen under the mistletoe with him.

"Maureen," he begins conversationally as he sidles up to her, with a wheedling tone that gets everyone turning their heads and grinning slowly. _Another year, another performance. _Mark was, shockingly, quite a good actor – that's another thing that makes them all glad for their excuse to get a little chummy once a year. "You look great."

"I know. Your point?" She bites her lip to hide her smile, eyes honing in on his twitchy fingers. He's set up the camera on his tripod in the corner, and he always acts so nervously without it. Roger mutters something about withdrawals, and blows a smirking kiss when the filmmaker shoots him a dirty look in return.

Mimi feigned gagging at the exchange. Collins thumped her on the back with a choked laugh. They _all_ knew what Mark and Roger got up to when they had the loft to themselves.

"Stop hitting on my boyfriend," Mimi scolds, ruffling Mark's hair. Roger scoffs.

"Stop telling your boyfriend to stop hitting on his boyfriend," he counters, slinging an arm around him. Joanne just sighs and sinks lower into the couch, pretending to read a copy of the Voice to disguise her amusement. It's two months old, and she hasn't noticed yet.

"You were saying, Mark?"

Startled back out of his pleased reverie at Roger's possessive touching – once, he might have complained, but with the way things have progressed he hardly has to feign protest at the affection anymore – Mark sheepishly returns his attention to his target.

Maureen is pouting. _Hates not being the center of attention, _Mark thinks, feeling his lips twitch upwards at the truth in it. He reaches out to take her hand and brings it up to brush his lips across it; Joanne places a hand on Collins' shaking back, slightly worried at the way his chest is heaving with the force of his silent laughter.

"My apologies," Mark says, very formally, and then breaks into a mischievous grin. "I was just wondering if you were ever going to give me a proper hello."

She pretends to consider it for a moment, twisting a glossy, wavy strand of hair around her finger, before reaching out to tip curl her hand around the back of his neck coyly. "That depends on whether or not you were planning on giving me a proper welcome back."

He has to stand on his tiptoes to kiss her but it's worth it, both of them giggling so much that they can barely keep their teeth from clacking, and everyone bursts into applause. Roger wolf whistles, and Mimi stomps over and plants her lips on his just to shut him up.

"Oh, shut up!" Maureen pulls away cheerfully, glancing back at their audience with an incredibly satisfied glint in her eyes. As fun as it is to watch Mark put on a little show, Maureen is a born performer, and she can't help but love the attention – not that she wouldn't be getting it anyways. Joanne, swallowing her wine, reaches to her with a reassuring smile.

"It's your turn, Mo," Collins reminds her, tilting his own glass precariously. He's probably a little more tipsy than the rest of them, but then, he had a good enough excuse – and even if he hadn't, it wasn't like Collins had ever been the sober type. Mark is drawn insistently to his side and stands there with one of his arms around his waist, as well as Roger's, feeling utterly squashed and terrifically content with that feeling.

After April he was sure that things could never be like this again. Now, he gets to see Roger smile – hear Collins laugh – see Maureen wrap her arms around Collins neck and kiss him chastely, nose wrinkled happily – listen to Mimi cheer and catcall…

The first year, he had thought Joanne might feel a little left out. Instead, she seems to enjoy just sitting back and watching the scene unfold almost as much as Mark, jealousy all but forgotten.

They have so much to thank Angel for.

Tomorrow, they'd all go together to visit her grave.

"C'mere, lovergirl," Collins is cooing, and Joanne is scrambling to get away from him, spluttering with laughter. "Gimme some sugar."

"Get it, Collins!" Roger calls through Mimi's fingers, and Mark snickers and leans heavily against his shoulder, thinking warmly about the footage he'll have later when they've all left and he has to wait another year for this kind of happiness again.

When Joanne comes to grab a handful of Maureen's ass and kisses her hard, with tongue, even Mark has to clap for them. The contentment radiates in his bones and in his gut and leaves him slightly drunk on their charming, once-a-year dynamic.

It wasn't entirely perfect, nor often enough, but it was what they had.

And as Maureen turned to kiss Roger, with her fingers twisted in his unwashed hair, their laughter floats up to the sky where Angel watches over them with a small smile.

She'd done something good before she died, after all.


	22. Mar

He hesitates in front of the building, gloved hand hovering uncertainly over the handle, and wonders if Peter will even recognize him now.

It's been five years, and Jason is well aware that he's changed. He'd made that choice, specifically – to throw it all away, to _run, _as though his life depended on it. To cut all his ties. Every single one, except for Nadia, whom he occasionally called from the payphone outside of the bar he worked at, just to make absolutely sure she wouldn't trace him.

In hindsight, it had been a reckless move. But he hadn't known what else to do.

Ivy's baby was healthy as could be, according to Nadia. Everyone was still in contact, everyone was happy. It was Jason who had imagined some disaster after graduation.

He could still probably go back, get his diploma, return to his life – but he was a different person now. He had piercings, he had stories… he had freedom.

He couldn't go back to who he'd been.

But he could go back to Peter.

Peter had deserved better than him, and he'd known it. That was probably the biggest reason he'd had for leaving – shame. He'd had his life all planned out for him and he'd still fucked it all up; he'd had a boyfriend who loved him, wanted him, despite all the odds, and a group of good friends, and a sister he could confide in, and potentially a family – a family with Peter.

He'd thrown it all away. He'd been careless. Selfish.

He could have just been honest, bu

He hadn't forgiven himself yet. He couldn't stop thinking of _Peter._

It had taken him this long to break down and finally ask Nadia, who told him (in an incredibly smug, knowing tone of voice) where Peter worked, the building of the agency he might find him at on a Friday evening.

The air is bitterly cold in New York. He thinks it's ironic that both of them had ended up here, just across a city from one another, so far from home – and Peter had gotten exactly what he'd wanted, sans Jason. It's ironic

Jason – stupid, straight-A, perfectionist Jason – had gone off on a year-long drug binge and never bothered to call to inform his friends, much less his parents, that he was still alive and kicking; Peter – sweet, confused, eternally guilty Peter – had gotten a scholarship to _NYU, _of all places, and ended up on fucking _Broadway_.

Talk about role reversal.

Jason glances up again nervously through his fringe, flicking it out of his eyes. Maybe that had been just what they'd needed? An end to the endless reprisal.

He didn't _want _to be that boy.

He was certain that Peter wouldn't go back if he could, either.

As he takes the first deliberate step inside, he wonders suddenly again if Peter will recognize him. He looks like a punk, not a valedictorian. But Peter had known him beyond his uniform, his costume, his mask… He'd known him on lazy Saturday afternoons, half-clothed or unclothed in their dorm, trading languid kisses and laughing into each other's mouths like they had all the goddamn time in the world.

They _could _have, if only he hadn't been such a little fucking –

The feeling comes up on him again like bile and he swallows against it, lips twisting into a grimace.

_Don't think about that. Smile for Peter._

But before he can school his expression, a familiar face comes leisurely striding around the corner, a disposable cup of coffee attached to his lips.

Jason freezes, and thanks God silently when Peter catches sight of him and slows, eyebrows drawing slowly together as he makes the connection.

He breaks their awkward stare to lunge for the foam cup that had fallen from his slack fingers, but he's not quite quick enough and an aromatic, tawny puddle spreads around Peter's sneakers. He doesn't even seem to notice. He's too busy staring in mild outrage at, Jason assumes, his scruffy appearance.

He puts on a brittle, nervous smile. "You look like you've seen a ghost, Pete."

"You – You," Peter starts, strangled and looking torn between – something and _something_, he couldn't tell, but he could guess that at least one of them was unpleasant. "You're _here. _You're alive? Nadia never said –"

"I asked her not to," he says quickly, straightening up and extending his hand to Peter, who takes it seemingly without even thinking about it. A warmth, not entirely unwelcome, starts to bloom deep in the center of his chest at the warmth of his hand.

_God, I've missed you…_

"I've missed you," he admits, sincerely, and doesn't look around anxiously like he might have when they were seventeen and so deep in the closet they probably could have died there and nobody would have found them. Peter notices; he swallows, the way he always used to when Jason surprised him with something romantic, and forces himself to meet his eyes.

Jason finds that he can't speak anymore, trying in vain to swallow past the lump growing in his throat. Jesus, he really _had_ missed him. What had he done without Peter all these years? What was he thinking, just leaving him? All he has to do now is look at him and he's falling, all over again.

He doesn't care if he falls straight to hell. Damn the church. Damn his parents.

Even if Peter didn't want him back, he would be a part of his life – Jason would do _anything _just for that chance.

"You left," Peter accuses, but the indignation is weak in the face of his awe. He shifts awkwardly, still holding onto Jason's wrist tightly as though he might run away, and looks like he might be restraining tears himself. "I thought – I thought you wanted to –"

To start over.

He had said that. He'd meant it.

But then the show had begun, and he'd panicked, and it had seemed like the only option…

_No more excuses._

"I know. I'm sorry." He lowers his voice, looking through his eyelashes at him in apology. "I really am, Peter. I'm here to make it up to you."

"Make it up to me?" Incredulous, Peter begins to loosen his grip, stepping back – and it's Jason's turn to grab for his wrist, holding it gently, sure the desperation is leaking onto his face. "How are you going to _make it up _to me, Jason? I waited for you. A whole year. Nadia kept telling me she was sure you'd come back, and I had to go to Ivy's baby shower and pretend everything was okay, and everyone just kept – looking at me with this unbearable _sympathy."_

He's choking on the words by the end of it, but Jason won't let him go. He bows his head and bears the first of what promises to be a dozen waves of unbearable, excruciating guilt, knowing he deserves it.

"I know. I'm sorry," he repeats, taking a breath. They're in public, and it's hardly the place to have this conversation – but they'd spent so long hiding because of him, and Peter deserves this, even if it is five years too late. "I'm sorry, Peter. It's just… I'm finally starting to feel better, and it's almost Christmas, and Nadia said… well, it doesn't matter."

He gives a tight smile and lets him go, awaiting his judgment. Peter eyes him warily. He doesn't really blame him.

_How does he know I won't just disappear again?_

_How does he know I'm not just here to clear my conscience? Maybe I'm that selfish._

He has to admit – he might have done it, five years ago.

Not now, though. _I've grown up._

He'd worked so hard to become who he is. He wants Peter to know that. He wants to have the opportunity to _show _him.

Not that he deserves it.

The silence stretches. The secretary is peering at them in a way she probably thinks is discreet, leaning slightly forward in her seat, not moving a muscle.

Jason begins the process of resigning himself to a well-deserved failure.

Finally, Peter swallows and speaks, hoarsely. "… What did you have in mind?"

Relief blooms alongside the heat building in his chest, and he wonders ecstatically if this is his own personal Christmas miracle. The giddy rush must show on his face, because Peter is smiling now too, just slightly but enough to make him flush with happiness.

Maybe it won't be what he really wants, after all, but it's something. Anything. He'll take what he can get, and it won't ever feel like settling.

Not as long as it's Peter.

He pulls at his earring, grinning shyly now. "If you're interested… Dinner's on me."


	23. Kris

"Mark –" Maureen breaks off midsentence, eyes widening, hand covering her mouth to contain a devious smile of realization. "Your eyes are _green_."

Mark, who hadn't really been listening for about ten minutes now, freezes.

"What?"

No.

"Your eyes," she repeats, and prods him between them with one long finger. "They're green."

It's the first time someone has noticed. He'd been so _careful._

God, he's screwed.

"No they're not," he tries, but feigning casual has never worked for him. He's not the actor here. Maureen looks absolutely smug now, coming closer, and there's nowhere to run in their tiny excuse for a kitchen.

"Yes they _are." _She gasps, suddenly, and then squeals shrilly enough that Mark has to cover his ears. He makes another mad lurch toward the door, but she grabs him by the wrists and yanks him back, looking at him with glittering, excited eyes. "Oh my God! Who is it?"

He grimaces and looks determinedly away from her. _I should have just stayed into my room until it went away… _"I don't know," he mutters reluctantly.

Mark _wished _he didn't know.

He'd honestly only found out by accident – because he happened to be in the record shop across the street, looking for an appropriate, quasi-romantic last-minute monthaversary gift for Maureen only a month ago, and had apparently looked exactly as frazzled and hopeless as he felt.

He can still feel that man's hands brushing his as they reached around him to pluck the perfect collection out of the stacks, can still see the infuriating smirk on his lips.

His eyes had been green.

And then, for a moment, they'd been shockingly blue.

It could have been a trick of the light… but that was being optimistic, and in this world, Mark knew better than to ignore something like _that._

_Roger_, read the nametag. _Sales associate._

Good. Now he knew the name of the (gorgeous) man he had to avoid for the rest of his life.

So, as Mark was wont to do, he ignored it. All of the increasingly obvious signs. When his nails turned black with polish he'd definitely never applied himself, and then back to clear pink; when his hair seemed longer, just for a few moments, and when he found scars he didn't like the look of on his arms and the crooks of his elbows.

Mere hallucinations. He could easily pawn the blame off on a glass of wine before bed, or the singular joint he'd shared with Collins earlier in the week.

Maureen, though, is not so easily deterred. "Who is it?" she demands, reaching out to grab his jaw and twist his head, looking into his eyes with some deep, glittering satisfaction that Mark honestly cannot understand. _Why would anyone be excited about this? _"I know you know. You can't just _not _know."

"Plenty of people don't know!" He frowns, trying to twist away from her and go back to his camera. He knows his cheeks are burning but there's not a lot he can do about it. _Damn it, Maureen. This could have been a perfectly pleasant conversation… _"It's not important, Mo. I'm not interested."

Aghast, she lets him go only to press a hand to her chest and step back. _"Mark! _That's horrible! Even if it turns out not to be romantic – it's so worth it! I can't imagine not having Joanne in my life, now. It's like nothing else!"

Her voice goes dreamy and the end and Mark has to suppress a phantom twinge of year-old jealousy in his gut. Maureen had met Joanne while she was still with Mark, planning a life with him – and she hadn't hesitated in making her choices, once she knew what Joanne wanted from her. It was hard sometimes not to be bitter about that.

Still, it was Maureen, and Mark loved her – she deserved to be happy, and Joanne obviously satisfied her every whim, which proved entertaining even if it _did_ make him cringe with horrible sympathy.

Maureen is watching him now with those big brown eyes of hers, clutching his hand, silently pleading with him to talk to her…

God, it's so hard to resist that look. Even now.

_But it's got nothing to do with that. She's not just my first love – she's – she's my best friend._

He swallows and is glad that he won't have to admit that out loud anytime soon. Collins would probably take the piss out of him for it if he ever did.

"I just – don't think it will work out," he admits, giving her a small, sheepish smile that never fails to make her coo. She does so now, which makes it even harder not to grin. "You know how things go with me. I wouldn't call myself successful. In anything."

Maureen tuts and reaches up again to turn him one way, then the other, looking him up and down critically. "Well, I'll admit, you could use a haircut and maybe a wardrobe adjustment…" He winces as her eyes light up. "I'll take you shopping! Besides, Mark, what are the odds that he'll reject you if he knows who you _are?"_

Mark is fairly certain he doesn't have the energy right now to try and explain his astronomical misgivings. He sighs, instead, half-heartedly.

What it really came down to was insecurity, not an existential crisis. But that somehow sounds even more pathetic than his professed cynicism. "I just don't think it's time," he tries, but Maureen is already cutting him off, breaking away from him to dig through her huge, gaudy floral purse enthusiastically.

"Oh, I have just the thing!"

"I am _not _wearing eye makeup, Maureen!"

It is a long two days before Maureen manages to get him close enough to the record shop to shove him inside, and when he turns to glare at her she's already making ridiculous, supposedly encouraging gestures through the glass.

With an internal groan, he turns back around and tries to pretend he knows what the fuck he's doing, abstractly hoping that if Roger is even working today he doesn't realize that the woman jumping up and down on the sidewalk outside is in any way acquainted with him.

Roger, gorgeous as the first time they'd locked eyes, is standing behind the counter looking dubiously out the window at her already.

_So much for that._

He feels ridiculous. And blind. Maureen had plucked his glasses off of his face cheerfully and said that he looked better without them, but Mark was privately sure that she was just trying to unsubtly bring attention to the eye color predicament.

He grimaces at the thought of it. It didn't hurt or anything, but it was disconcerting. He wondered if Roger was half as disturbed as he was, or if he'd even noticed it…

_He must have, unless he doesn't own any mirrors._

One glance at his getup is enough to assure him that this man does, in fact, own a mirror. Probably several. _If I had an ass like that, I'd sure as hell have half a dozen mirrors in my house…_

With a burst of chagrin, Mark realizes that Roger is looking at him, eyebrow raised, while he stands there in the middle of the store staring like an idiot. His face is hot as he clears his throat and stumbles forward, suddenly feeling entirely too reckless.

"Can I help you?" Roger asks, amused. His voice is as gravelly as he looks – there's stubble on his chin and he's got several silver hoops in one of his ears, just one in the other. Mark belatedly notices that he's wearing rather a lot of eyeliner, nails black where they're tapping on the counter, and feels even more ridiculous. _Why didn't I let Maureen dress me?_

This isn't the kind of man he'd ever imagined himself dating, let alone _mated _to.

Somehow, though, it still feels right.

He swallows nervously. "Hi! Um, I mean…" While he's struggling to come up with something to ask for, silently panicking and hoping Maureen can see all of the red flags he's mentally sending up calling her for help, Roger blinks and then narrows his eyes, peering more closely at him.

He points at him baldly. "You. I helped you a couple of months ago, didn't I?" His face cracks into a devious grin. "Looking for another record for your girlfriend?"

"What? No," Mark stammers, completely thrown. For one terrifying moment he'd thought that Roger had realized who he was, and had nearly blurted out an answer to a question he hadn't even been asked. "No, um, no, she's – she found her mate, you know, they're getting married this summer…"

_Why did I say that? Why am I telling him this?_

He chances a desperate glance back in Maureen's direction. _Save me._

She gives him a delighted thumbs up, discreetly from behind a sign, apparently oblivious to the pleading in his eyes.

He tries not to scowl. _So much for that._

"That's too bad," Roger murmurs, and he has to swivel back to look at him, breath hitching when he realizes he's wandered closer to the counter – Roger is leaning forward on it casually, entirely too close for Mark's liking. His heart is jackhammering in his chest. "You here for yourself, then?"

He starts to say something else, and Mark opens his mouth to answer, and they both freeze.

Roger blinks. His eyes are blue.

Mark stares at him hopelessly, mouth dry, and gives up trying to remember the lines he hadn't rehearsed nearly enough with Maureen. "No…"

Roger is silent for a long, long moment, a flurry of expressions crossing his face – understanding, slight incredulity (Mark winces at that one), helpless shock – and finally, he seems to settle on cautious pleasure.

His eyes are still blue. Mark imagines his must be equally green. Normally it doesn't last this long – just a flicker, a minute at the most, but now it's obvious, now there really is no going back…

He reaches across the counter and lightly grabs Mark's wrist, just as he tries to back away. "If you don't want a record, how about dinner?"

The invitation is not something he's prepared for. Mark hears himself make a small, choked noise, trying frantically to find some appropriate response.

In the end the most he can squeak out is a quick, "Sure, why not!"

Roger smiles slowly, languidly. His eyes shutter back to green, and Mark swears he could fall into them.

"Alright. I'll see you at seven, here?"

Outside, Maureen lets out a whoop that's barely muffled through the glass.


	24. Elizabeth

Arik almost leaves the bar without realizing who it is he's sitting next to.

Of course, he knows the story well enough. His brother had been more than candid about his loathing for the kid, and he'd always had a bad habit of calling Arik up when he knew that his brother didn't want to talk to him – not now, not ever, and especially not about whatever the hell he was rambling about right now.

According to Anatoly it went like this:

Freddie, young and impressionable as a baby chick, got lost one day on the way home from school after a fight with some big bully and was taken under the hideous wing of this cigarette-smoking, leather-jacket-wearing, silver-studded junkie of a hoodlum.

Of course, anyone who got _that _description would have assumed Freddie was thirteen. Trust Anatoly to dig his hole even deeper…

But Arik doesn't particularly care about people who think his brother is a pervert. He doesn't particularly care about anything to do with his brother at all, these days.

That's an improvement – hell, that's an accomplishment.

But here he is, Roger Davis in the flesh. He peers from beneath his overgrown, long-unwashed hair at the man seated on the stool nearest his, slumped listlessly over the bar.

Of course, after Anatoly's trial, it had been obvious that he'd been provoked – the assault charges had been dropped and Davis had gone home in a huff, escorted by his anxious little chaperone. (some generic name – Marcus, something like that, all that Arik knew was that he looked about the same brand of pathetic that he'd come to associate with Anatoly, and he'd bet his entire liquor supply that they'd fooled around at least once)

Freddie had already been admitted to a clinic. Roger, it seemed, wasn't trusted to be in the same ward – he was sent to a smaller scale hospital, closer to the slum he apparently lived in – and while both of them were issued misdemeanors it was obvious who got off with the raw end of the deal.

Freddie had no idea where Roger had ended up, and vice versa.

And Anatoly hadn't heard a word since. Which apparently suited him just fine.

Arik, though, had been intrigued. Here's a kid he could have been: desperate, cocky, hopelessly addicted. Here's a kid he could have been, diagnosed with a terminal illness at nineteen, future sucked into some terrifying black hole of careless mistakes he'd spun all by himself. Trying desperately to drag someone, anyone, in with him.

Anatoly has no idea how close he came to being the Freddie to Arik's Roger.

But it's been months since then – long, tedious months in which Arik slowly began to accept that he wasn't going back to Russia and found that he didn't really miss it – and Roger looks like an entirely different person now, bedraggled and miserable.

_Diagnosis – positive._

Once again, Arik finds himself forcibly reminded of himself at that age. Lost. Hopeless. Self-destructing. He starts to wonder if perhaps it _would _be best to just leave him there, go back home and –

And what? The entire reason he was here was to avoid Anatoly and his sickening love affair. His only other option was Florence and Svetlana's home, and that was crawling with teenagers. Not the Roger type, but the _young_ and _naïve_ and _wholesome_ kind, which he couldn't stomach for the life of him.

No, he was safest here at the bar.

Roger stirred, groaning quietly. Arik wonders what he must look like, staring at this c_hild _over his glass, like a snake about to strike.

He relaxes his shoulders discreetly. He doesn't want to appear _too_ unapproachable.

Some buried curiosity is burning in him, wondering, connecting without his consent. He scowls at his own pathological synapses, but it's no use. He's helpless, as he always used to be – to Anatoly, to cocaine, to everything, until finally he burnt himself out and had to be fished out of someone else's bathtub covered in vomit and hardly knowing his own name.

He thinks that this boy probably understands that precise feeling all too well, and another pang of sympathy makes him grit his teeth.

He finishes his drink and calls for another one. He's not fucking drunk enough for this.

_I am never drunk enough for anything._

He puts his lips to the glass again and refuses to glance over, although he can feel those weary, confused, half-heartedly angry eyes on him. _I don't care._

But he does. He does care.

He hates caring. He thought he'd stamped it out of himself years ago.

And now Anatoly's jerking him around again, and he's seeing himself in quasi-strangers in bars that he's terribly fond of and unwilling to start avoiding, and there's absolutely nothing he can do about it short of going on a drug binge.

He pauses and considers it for a moment, half-tempted. It's been a good five years since he's had one of those…

Maybe it's time to –

"Hey. Hey. I know you."

He doesn't give any visible sign that he's heard the boy, but internally he's already wishing he'd escaped while he'd had the chance. Anatoly will be upset if he finds out about this later…

Well. All the more reason to do it, then.

"You were at the –" He glances over just in time to see Roger choke off the end of his sentence, going mottled red. His roots are growing out, his hair unwashed and looking as though it hasn't seen a comb in all the months since Arik had seen him. He's thinner, ghostly, and pale, and there's at least three days' worth of stubble unevenly gracing his gaunt cheeks. _So much for youthful beauty._

"The trial?" he suggests, a wry smile creeping onto his lips. Roger scowls violently and shoves himself off of the stool, stumbling back. Before he knows what he's doing, Arik is reaching out and grabbing him by the bony wrist, steadying him. "Yes. I was there. That was my brother, who you were testifying against."

Roger looks more wary – maybe afraid? – than angry now. He yanks his arm away from him and rubs his wrist absently, eying him. "I could have guessed that."

Arik looks down at himself impassively. He doesn't look _that _much like Anatoly anymore, something he's vaguely proud of and more than vaguely glad for. Apparently, though, the difference still doesn't overcome the similarity.

"Good for you," he says, finally, shrugging as he turns back to his drink. Let him go, then – Arik's days of chasing possibilities were long over.

Roger seems to sense this; after a long, tense moment of hesitation, he slides back into his seat, glowering at Arik with barely concealed confusion.

"Come to gloat?" he mutters, and Arik snorts, covering his mouth.

_Arrogant, isn't he?_

"For your information, I do not really care about your plight," he tells him, lips still twitching at the thought. Lord, he can't even remember being that caught up in his own misery. If he cares for no one, it's only fair that no one cares for him. It doesn't even hurt anymore. Roger seems to be realizing this, and his mouth takes on an uneasy slant.

_Yes, it's going to happen to you, too. Brace yourself._

Arik has a feeling that there's a good reason he's never mentored anyone.

"I did hear about your little disease," he says slyly just as Roger's opening his mouth to protest. The younger man glares at him and snaps it shut, but doesn't move away. Arik finds it rather amusing. "I am jealous, frankly."

"It's a death sentence," Roger says flatly. "And it's none of your business."

Humming, Arik glances over him again appraisingly. _Attractive, even for what he is… No wonder my brother felt so threatened. _

"Regardless, I do know." He shrugs and puts on a disarming smile, wondering if it still works. Roger blinks at him owlishly. Perhaps it does. "Perhaps you'd be willing to extend your gift."

"Gift?" His mouth works, half-horrified, half-incredulous. Arik is pleased enough with his plan – it was hastily put-together, but he recognizes an opportunity when he sees one.

Life is _so _tedious…

It would be undoubtedly excellent to have something hanging over his head like that, a safety net, a guarantee.

Nobody would even have to know.

"I am not enchanted with life," he says, lowering his voice conspiratorially. Any care he'd felt for him is overridden by his own interest, now. There are certainly plenty of ways to contract a terminal illness, but this would be such a sweet risk to take, such a thrilling, dramatic ending. "I would not mind…"

It seems to click, then, and Roger's face twists in pale fury. "Fuck you," he spits, spinning away and stomping for the door. Arik watches him go and calmly sips his drink, contemplative.

Ah, well. Perhaps he'll run into him again, convince him…

There's no hurry. Death will come, eventually.

He exits the bar just in time to see Roger, skinny and shivering and pulling his jacket tight around him, turning the corner and racing away. His chest twinges again.

Despite himself, he wonders what it would be like to live – to love, or at least to care for someone again. To have an understanding.

He makes a decision. He will definitely be coming back to this bar.

Somehow, some way, he'll change his life, and he'll use this boy to do it.


End file.
